OPINIONSnBusiness as Usualnby Frank Brownlown’The effects of infantile instruction are, like those of syphilis, never completely cured”n— Robert BriffaultnIlliberal Education: The Politics ofnRace and Sex on Campusnby Dinesh D’SouzanNew York: The Free Press;n319 pp., $19.95nShortly before Christmas last, I heardna college president say, gesturingntoward a copy of Roger Kimball’snTenured Radicals, “That book is makingnmy job very difficult.” Evidently,nthe anti-academic barrage that begannin earnest with Allan Bloom’s ThenClosing of the American Mind is havingnan effect. Here in Massachusettsnanother sign of the academic times isnthat Michael Dukakis, on his way outnof the statehouse, stripped the state’snuniversities of money with virtually nonprotest at all from the general public.nWhat began as a theme of thenconservative press has been taken upnby nearly everyone, and during thenpast year the folly, corruption, andnFrank Brownlow is a professor ofnEnglish at Mount Holyoke College.n30/CHRONICLESnsheer weirdness to be found in contemporarynacademic life have becomenstock topics of every kind of journalism.nAcademics now approach newsnmagazines as if they were boobytrapped.nA Smith College professorntold me that when he read Time’s lastnarticle on the subject, and found it didnnot mention Smith, he almost perspirednwith relief Add to a hostile pressnthe effects of a recession and a dwindlingnnumber of applicants, and itnappears that these are hard times fornacademia.nIlliberal Education, therefore, appearednthis past spring to a well-preparednaudience. Much of its content,nbased on the reportage of the last fewnyears, is familiar, its shock value dissipated.nMost readers could make a fairnguess at the contents from the titlenalone: preferential admission by race,nrepresented by Berkeley’s treatment ofnits Asian applicants; the dismantling ofnthe humanities curriculum at Stanford;nspeech and thought police at Michigan,nHarvard, and elsewhere; postmodernistncriticism at Duke, and Afro-nnncentrism at Howard. Even many of thencharacters are familiar. Academic affairsnhave become such a topic of newsnthat one continually reads D’Souza innthe context of more up-to-date disclosures.nFor instance, allegahons of financialncorruption at Stanford providena less idyllic background to the curricularnwars there than D’Souza describes.nAnd D’Souza’s amusing account ofnStanley Fish, the cheery postmodernistnentrepreneur of Duke, is enriched fornthe reader who knows about the professor’snassault on the National Associationnof Scholars as racist, sexist, andnhomophobic — and as a threat to hisnown well-watered turfnD’Souza’s thesis, is that America’sncampuses are the scene of a “victim’snrevolution” that aims to replace annolder order described as white, male,nelitist, Eurocentric, racist, et cetera,nwith a new one based on racial andncultural diversity, hospitable to thennonwhite, the female, and the homosexual.nHis book is mostly about thenmeans by which the revolution’s devoteesnadvance the cause. Speech in anyn