LETTERS
To the Edito r:
Edith Kurzwej]'s "Education
without Politics" (PR 1, 1992) and
William Phillips's accompanying
comments
make
sweeping
generalizations falsely implying that
academic leftists are monolithic in
their beliefs and behavior. Kurzweil
further believes leftists have a
"stranglehold on faculty and admin–
istrations." Is she claiming this is true
at the majority of colleges which,
like mine (California Polytechnic
State University, where I teach in the
Department of English) are dedicated
primarily to servicing the business
world through job training and re–
search? Is she perhaps referring to that
notorious deconstructionist John
Silber, to the gang of Afrocentric
Marxists controlling the Harvard
Board of Overseers and the Univer–
ity of California Regents, to Presi-
dent Hannah Gray of Chicago fo–
menting antiphallogocentrism from
her seat on the board of directors of
J.
P.
Morgan Guaranty Trust and
ARCO?
Kurzweil suggests that if leftists
"could abandon their ideology for
just a few hours a week, they might
be able to stop posturing for per–
sonal ends." Shouldn't the same ap–
peal be addressed to Silber, William
J.
Bennett (who hires an agent to
publicize his posturings), Lynne Ch–
eney, Allan Bloom, Hilton Kramer,
Roger Kimball, Dinesh D'Souza, and
the strident leaders of the National
Assocation of Scholars'
Kurzweil hyperbolically claims
that "our American left has been
successful in cornering the political
discourse" and in "holding on to its
role as victim long after it has won
the ideological war." Who on the
academic left would dream of
attaining power at the level of
William Kristol as Dan Quayle's
chief of stam His mother Gertrude
Himmelfarb is among the conserva–
tives with whom the National
Council on the Humanities has been
packed under Bush. It is widely
acknowledged that under Cheney the
National Endowment for the Hu–
manities grant review process has
been rigged to shut out leftists. (See
Stephen Burd's article, "Chairnun of
Humanities Fund Has Politicized
Grants Process, Critics Charge," in
The Chronicle of Higher Edllcation,
April 22, 1992.) In the Carol Iannone
affair, the Modern Language
Association was savaged in the media
for its allegedly political opposition
to Iannone's scholarly credentials
(consisting mainly of shallow
polemical articles in
Commentary
and
publications of the National As–
sociation of Scholars), but does any–
one believe she was nominated for
any but political reasons?
William Kristol's father, Irving
Kristol, has been both an executive
and beneficiary of the Olin Founda–
tion, which is in effect a branch of
the Reagan and Bush administrations
and spends tens of millions yearly
coordinating the ideological war
against the left. Moreover, most of
the projects sponsored by Olin,
