mencement address you’ll never hear.”nIt was an invented, undeliverablenspeech: “We the faculty take no pridenin our educational achievements withnyou. We have prepared you for a worldnthat does not exist, indeed, that cannotnexist. You have spent four years supposingnthat failure leaves no record.nYou have learned at Brown that whennyour work goes poorly, the painlessnsolution is to drop out. But startingnnow, in the work to which you go,nfailure marks you. Confronting difficultynby quitting leaves you changed.nOutside Brown, quitters are no heroes.n”With us you could argue aboutnwhy your errors were not errors . . .nbut tomorrow in the world to whichnyou go, you had best not defend errorsnbut learn from them. You will benill-advised to demand praise for whatndoes not deserve it and to abuse thosenwho do not give it. For four years wencreated an altogether forgiving worid,nin which whatever slight effort you gavenwas all that was demanded. When youndid not keep appointments, we madennew ones. When you were late to class,nwe ignored it. When your work camenin beyond the deadline, we pretendednnot to care.n”Worse still, when you were boring,nwe acted as if you were saying somethingnimportant. When you werengarrulous … we listened as if it mattered.nWhen you tossed on our desksnwriting upon which you had not labored,nwe read it and even responded,nas though you earned a response.nWhen you were dull, we pretendednyou were smart. When you were predictablenand unimaginative and routine,nwe listened as if to new andnwonderful things. When you demandednfree lunch, we served it. And all thisnwhy? Despite your fantasies, it was notnFor Immediate ServicenChroniclesnSUBSCRIBERSnTOLL FREE NUMBERn1-800-435-0715nILLINOIS RESIDENTSn1-800-892-0753n38/CHRONICLESnto be bothered, and the easy way outnwas pretense: smiles and easy B’s . . . •n”That is why, on this commencementnday, we have nothing in which tontake pride. Oh, there is one morenthing. Try not to act toward yourncoworkers and bosses as you have actedntoward us. When they do not give younwhat you want but have not earned,ndon’t abuse them, insult them, act outnwith them your parlous relationshipsnwith your parents. This, too, we haventolerated. It was, as I said, not to benliked. Few professors actually carenwhether or not they are liked by peerparalyzednadolescents, fools so shallownas to imagine professors care not aboutneducation but about popularity. It was,nagain, to be rid of you. So go, unlearnnthe lies we taught you. To life!”nThe next four months saw this littlenpiece reprinted throughout the world,nand on all manner of TV shows Incarried the message that students areninvolved in a fraud of their own making.nIt was a message that people arenresponsible for what they do. I, too,nbear responsibility for the fact that, innthe aftermath, I was forced out of myndepartment and discipline at Brown,nwhich was Religious Studies; and thenacademic unit I then worked to foundnwas and still is — and was meant tonbe — Siberia. When student-failuresnbrought meretricious charges againstnme, my “peers” managed to drag mattersnout for nearly two years of trialsn(ending in complete vindication).nIn general, my campus career atnBrown was over that May. My scholarship,nof course, went forward. Tenurenreally does protect that very tiny handfulnof people who really need it, although,noverall, Sykes’ rejection of tenurenseems to me well-argued. I can’tnsay it was a terrible loss to be annacademic pariah; to the contrary, I justnworked harder in learning and researchnand published intellectually more ambitiousnwork. But it did leave me sympatheticnto books that call into questionnthe self-indulgent privilege, the mindless,ncostly fraud, the utter waste, that isnthe worid of American higher education.nThis country needs well-educatedncitizens. Where are they going toncome from?n]acoh Neusner, a professor at Brown,nis a member of the Institute fornAdvanced Study in Princeton.nnnOne Day innthe Lifenby Leon SteinmetznGrey Is the Color of Hopenby Irina Ratushinskayantranslated by Alyona KojevnikovnNew York: Alfred A. Knopf 360 pp.,n$18.95nWhen I was 15 years old I read anbook that shattered me. Thenbook was called SS im Einsatz (“ThenSS in Action”). It was a nonfictionnbook, a 600-page collection ofndocuments — memos, orders, dispatchesnsent to the units of Waffen-SS,nreports from the sonderkommandoes innaction in Germany and elsewhere.nThere were some pictures, too, takennby SS photographers. The book wasnimpersonal, detached, and matter-offact.nNow, many years later, I have comenacross another book that has devastatednme almost as much, although I’m wisernnow and know quite a few things onnthe subject of that second book. It isncalled Grey Is the Color of Hope, butnmight as well be called “The KGB innAction.” And if the SS book wasndetached and impersonal. Grey Is thenColor of Hope is very much attachednand very personal. It is a book of prosenwritten by a true poet.nI have read numerous books writtennby people who went through horriblenimprisonments, from the torturenchambers of the Inquisition to thenprisons of Jacobin Paris, and fromnHitler’s auschwitzes to the presentdaynSoviet “strict regime” politicalncamps, but hers is one of the mostnheartwrenching accounts I have evernread on the encounter of a decentnhuman being with vicious jailers, andnof a flickering human spirit strugglingnto survive in a man-made hell.nIn 1982, Irina Ratushinskaya, a 28year-oldnprofessor of physics at a teachers’ncollege in Odessa, was arrested bynthe KGB for alleged “anti-Soviet activities.”nThese “activities” consisted ofnwriting poetry and voicing objectionsnto the torturing of political prisoners innSoviet jails. “I’m here because of mynpoems,” she says, answering one of thenjail inmates. “How’s that? Your poemsnagainst the government, were they?”n