One of the great disappointments of modern life is that college is now regarded as a "safe" space. When I started college, nearly sixty years ago, the best thing about college was that it was NOT a safe space. In college professors used dirty words. In college, we were encouraged to ask what ELSE is "lovely, dark, and deep." In college, we read subversive French plays. In college, history wasn't written only by the winners, wasn't always just lies agreed upon.

But something happened, not terribly long after I graduated in 1967. The Overton Window came to campus. I suspect it had something to do with the practical dominoes of affirmative action. When colleges started admitting students who were going to face social resistance, some effort had to be made to make curricula less part of that resistance. Minority students had good reason to expect the whole system to be stacked against them, not just the majority students, but the curricula as well. This was a White man's place. Surely, everything about it reinforced White men's supremacy.

These thoughts are not illegitimate. The problem is that some cures are at least arguably worse than their diseases, and even if they aren't, their side effects may be unpleasant and lasting. The practical importance of a college degree came to outweigh the social importance of a liberal education. As a political matter, it became more important to graduate minority students than to educate anyone. College had to be made safe because more and more students arrived without the privilege of thick, White skin.

No doubt, the quality of undergraduate education has suffered. But the quality of undergraduate education is just one weight on the scale of preparatory justice. Maybe this is just a transitional phase, training wheels for a less racially discriminating society. I'm not predicting a return to controversial studies anytime soon, but in the period like that between Burns and Brooks, things may change again.