In Plato's Cave

In this candid and delightful memoir, Alvin Kernan recalls his life as a student, professor, provost, and dean during turbulent decades of change in the hallowed halls of Columbia, Williams, Oxford, Yale, and Princeton. His vividly remembered account is a unique personal story and more -- it is also a history of what has been won, and lost, in the culture wars of the second half of the twentieth century.

Alvin Kernan is senior advisor in the humanities at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Acknowledgments

xi

introduction Shifting Educational Plates

xiii

Theater and Reality in Greenwich Village: Columbia, 1946

1

(9)

The Other End of the Log: Williams College, 1946-1949

10

(28)

Chatter About Shelley: Oxford, 1949-1951

38

(21)

See My George Gascoigne: Yale Graduate School, 1951-1954

59

(26)

Keeping Them Quiet: Yale, 1954-1960

85

(21)

The Two Cultures, Science and Literature

106

(13)

Publish or Perish: Tenure at Yale, 1960-1964

119

(18)

Goodbye, Boola Boola: Yale Administration, 1964-1970

137

(21)

When Do We Want It? Now! The Bobby Seale Trial, New Haven, 1970

158

(21)

Question All Authority: The Breakdown of Meaning and Language, Yale, 1970-1973

179

(23)

A Long Walk After Lunch: Princeton and the Later 1970s

202

(28)

The New Technology Calls All in Doubt: Television, Books, Libraries, Computers

230

(16)

No Obligation to Be Right, Only to Be Interesting: Teaching as Power and Politics, Princeton, the 1980s

246

(30)

The Break Between Generations, Retirement

276

(19)

epilogue The Dogs Bark, the Caravan Passes On

295

(6)

index

301

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials