Popular Front U.rnby J.O. TaternHow well I remember, 40 years ago, prowling in the stacksrnof a college library and reading the books, observing museumrnpieces in the halls of that library, and attending concertsrnin the auditorium next door. Glenn Gould showed up to playrnthe Goldberg Variations, Jerome Hines to sing, and WolfgangrnSchneiderhan to play Vivaldi on his violin. In those days, a collegerncampus seemed the place to be.rnI have never left the campus, though the locale has changedrnmore than once. But nowadays, when I want to hear GlennrnGould play the Goldberg Variations (his first recording of 1955rnof course, not his later, latest, and last), I listen at home, andrnnot only because Glenn Gould quit touring and left us. Therncollege campus is less often the place to be.rnIn the old days, of course, college professors were deemed tornbe men and women worthy of respect. But if I ever subconsciouslyrnassumed by professing anything myself that I mightrnearn any respect, I have long since been disabused of any suchrnnotion. For one thing, the social function of the professor hasrnbeen radically altered with the redefinition of knowledge. Forrnanother, I have known too many college professors to respectrnthem automatically myself. And for yet another, as America’srnmaterialism has exploded, we now live in a world in whichrnvalue is calculated solely by money, and a college president canrnseriously refer to himself as a C.E.O.rnNow I hasten to say that there are today a number of professorsrnwhom I do indeed respect, and who are respected by others.rnI could easily name those I know. But as the curriculumrnhas collapsed into stratified anarchy, so too has the attitude ofrnthe professoriate. In the arts and humanities, knowledge itselfrnhas been trivialized and even inverted. Today an English professorrnmay declare that she is “an agent of social change,” arn”philosopher” can be nothing more than a feminist, and a sociologistrnmay be an apologist for, rather than an analyst of, criminality.rnWe would be hard-pressed to deny that part of thernproblem is the personnel, or that the “tenured radicals,” asrnRoger Kimball has called them, have profoundly altered thern].0. Tate is a professor of English at Dowling College on LongrnIsland.rnacademy by occupying it.rnI first sniffed the winds of change in New York City when Irnwas 16 years old, and two psychologists whom I met sociallyrngrilled me about my suspicious lack of belief in the Soviet system.rnI thought then that it was curious that academic psychologistsrnshould be so lacking in reason, or even information. Irnthink now that they were New Yorkers.rnBy the time I was at college two years later, I saw that I was inrnfor it. My first discussion on campus was with a belligerent femalernwho, though but a freshman herself, demanded that I explainrnto her the doubtful notion of a “communist dupe.” I didrnfully explain that concept to her, after which she lectured mernfor an hour on the virtues of Fidel Gastro. I then began to wonderrnwhether I should not have pursued the study of refrigeratorrnrepair, rather than Dostoyevsky, whose work began to speak tornme more fully than ever before. As for the girl, she later marriedrnan African and went on to God knows what.rnI began to discover among my classmates a host of “red diaperrnbabies”—the children of the old Popular Front. Their fervor,rntheir arrogance, and their ignorance were all of a piece, essentiallyrnreligious though secular, and not to be questioned.rnMy reaction was to turn again to the library, where I easilyrnfound the substance and the dialogue they could not give me.rnThere is nothing arcane about the reading list I pursued, but itrnwas not assigned in any class.rnThere was in those days a clear convergence between onernkind of reform movement and another. The civil rights movement,rnwhatever the legitimacy of its claims, attracted the ideologicalrnleft which used it as a pretext, a move subsequently cooptedrnby the federal government. That movement splinteredrnin violence in the I960’s, with the more extreme elements movingrnon to a remarkable radicalism. It was not long, to movernfrom sit-ins and folk songs to bombs in basements, and it wasrnnot far. The same people were involved, and I knew some ofrnthem in college, who later wound up on the front page of thernnewspaper as fugitives from justice.rnAs I went on to graduate school, I soon found myself confrontedrnby another aggrieved female. At the time, I was attemptingrnto walk into the Graduate Student Union at Golum-rnSEPTEMBER 1997/23rnrnrn