Notes &
When teachers condescendingly handle literature as repositories of reactionary values, crossword puzzles, and historical documents, Morson observes that students are driven away by “a nose for nonsense.” When the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness is replaced by political grievances (Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Studies, Postcolonial Studies), we do not advance humanistic education. Instead, we “nurture the feckless antinomianism that Jacques Barzun dubbed ‘directionless quibble,’ ” as Roger Kimball wrote in Tenured Radicals.
