By Scott McLemee
A few weeks ago, sitting over a cup of coffee, a writer in his twenties told me what it had been like to attend a fairly sedate university (I think he used the word ?dull") that had a few old-time New Left activists on its faculty. ?If they thought you were interested in anything besides just your career,? he said, ?if you cared about ideas or issues, they got really excited. They sort of jumped on you.?
Now, I expected this to be the prelude to a little tribute to his professors ? how they had taken him seriously, opened his mind to an earlier generation?s experience, etc. But no. ?It was like they wanted to finish their youth through you, somehow,? he said. ?They needed your energy. They needed you to admire them. They were hungry for it. It felt like I had wandered into a crypt full of vampires. After a while, I just wanted to flee.?
It was disconcerting to hear. My friend is not a conservative. And in any case, this was not the usual boilerplate about tenured radicals seeking to brainwash their students. He was not complaining about their ideas and outlook. This vivid appraisal of his teachers was not so much ideological as visceral. It tapped into an undercurrent of generational conflict that the endless ?culture wars? seldom acknowledge.
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