SOURCE: Pinsker, Sanford. “Dispatches from the Culture Wars.” Georgia Review 50, no. 3 (fall 1996): 575-83.

In the following essay, Pinsker compares three books on the culture wars, among them The Twilight of Common Dreams, and claims that Gitlin's critique of both Left and Right is balanced and well-grounded historically.

The marketplace of ideas has never been a refuge for the intellectually timid nor a safe haven for those who imagine that what the academy vigorously debates has no consequences beyond its ivy-covered walls. Yet one would be hard pressed to think of a time before now when the professoriate has been more divided, its squabbles more contentious, or its injury reports so widely covered in the popular press. What I'm describing, of course, are the “culture wars”—an umbrella term meant to cover the conflicts over not only who should be admitted to higher education's most prestigious institutions and what...