SOURCE: “Responses to Benjamin Barber: I. Politics and the University,” in Salmagundi, Nos. 82–83, Spring-Summer, 1989, pp. 360–67.

In the following response to Barber's “Cultural Conservatism and Democratic Education,” Nachman challenges Barber's assertion that truth is a reflection of individual interest.

Benjamin Barber has ostensibly come here today to defend two decades of leftist innovations in the university from the ‘cultural conservatives’ who stubbornly refuse to recognize how much better a place the American university has become. I say ostensibly because I see no effort on Barber's part to engage the thought of those he attacks. They provide him with names to invoke to audiences such as this one on occasions such as this. The mention of Bloom and Bennett will put the house in the right mood, so there is no need to consider the content of what they say. After all, it is almost a quarter of a century...