In Plato's Cave

In this delightful and candid memoir, Alvin Kernan recalls his life as a student, professor, provost, and dean during a distinguished career in some of higher education’s most hallowed halls. With his customary wit and insight, Kernan recounts his experiences at Columbia, Williams, Oxford, Yale, and Princeton in the company of an array of fascinating colleagues. And he describes from an insider’s point of view how colleges and universities in the second half of the twentieth century have been transformed in radical ways. Against the background of what it was like to work and teach in turbulent decades of change, Kernan details the broader educational battles in which he became embroiled. He discusses the struggle for equality of opportunity for women and minorities; the questioning of administrative and intellectual authority; the appearance of deconstructive types of theory; the technological shift from printed to electronic information; the politicization of the classroom; and much more. His vividly remembered account is not only a unique personal story, it is a thought-provoking history that brims with insight into what has been won and lost in the culture wars. Contents 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction Shifting Educational Plates 13 1 Theater and Reality in Greenwich Village: Columbia, 1946 21 2 The Other End of the Log: Williams College, 1946-1949 30 3 Chatter About Shelley: Oxford, 1949-1951 58 4 See My George Gascoigne: Yale Graduate School, 1951-1954 79 5 Keeping Them Quiet: Yale, 1954-1960 105 6 The Two Cultures, Science and Literature 126 7 Publish or Perish: Tenure at Yale, 1960-1964 139 8 Goodbye, Boola Boola: Yale Administration, 1964-1970 157 9 When Do We Want It? Now! The Bobby Seale Trial, New Haven, 1970 178 10 Question All Authority: The Breakdown of Meaning and Language, Yale, 1970-1973 199 11 A Long Walk After Lunch: Princeton and the Later 1970s 222 12 The New Technology Calls All in Doubt: Television, Books, Libraries, Computers 250 13 No Obligation to Be Right, Only to Be Interesting: Teaching as Power and Politics, Princeton, the 1980s 266 14 The Break Between Generations, Retirement 296 Epilogue. The Dogs Bark, the Caravan Passes On 315 Index 321

In this prize-winning book Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, arguing that during this period American Christianity was democratized and common people became powerful actors on the religious scene. Hatch examines five distinct traditions or mass movements that emerged early in the nineteenth century - the Christian movement, Methodism, the Baptist movement, the black churches, and the Mormons - showing how all offered compelling visions of individual potential and collective aspiration to the unschooled and unsophisticated.