Tom & Alissa

The New York Times Book Review reflects on the twenty years since Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, and the trials of choosing a literary canon. Totally fascinating if you’re a student or professor.

But many young professors aren’t interested in teaching outside their narrow specialties, nor are they generally prepared to do so. And colleges are loath to reinstate the core curriculums they abandoned in the ’60s. “Because we lack cultural self-confidence, we’ve lacked the ability to say, ‘This is a good book and should be taught, this isn’t and shouldn’t,’ ” said Judt, who was dean of the humanities at N.Y.U. in the early ’90s.