Recent developments in American higher education-curricular revisions, 'multiculturalism, ' the challenge to traditional views of 'canons' and 'classics' have become the focus of public attention and controversy across the nation. The Politics of Liberal Education enters these debated with a strong defense of educational reform by a group of distinguished scholars and teachers.

Darryl Gless and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, eds.

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Public, the Press, and the Professors / Barbara Herrnstein Smith 1
Humanities for the Future: Reflections on the Western Culture Debate at Stanford / Mary Louise Pratt 13
The Extraordinary Convergence: Democracy, Technology, Theory, and the University Curriculum / Richard A. Lanham 33
Teach the Conflicts / Gerald Graff 57
Cult-Lit: Hirsh, Literacy, and the "National Culture" / Barbara Herrnstein Smith 75
The Master's Pieces: On Canon Formation and the African-American Tradition / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 95
Liberal Arts Education and the Struggle for Public Life: Dreaming about Democracy / Henry A. Giroux 119
Pedagogy in the Context of an Antihomophobic Project / Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 145
Serious Watching / Alexander Nehamas 163
From Ivory Tower to Tower of Babel? / Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich 187
The Emergence of the Humanities / Bruce Kuklick 201
The Academy and the Public / Phyllis Franklin 213
Classics and Canons / George A. Kennedy 223
Two Cheers for the Cultural Left / Richard Rorty 233
The Common Touch, or, One Size Fits All / Stanley Fish 241
Against Nostalgia: Reflections on Our Present Discontents in American Higher Education / Francis Oakley 267
Notes on Contributors 291
Index 295