By Michael Miner
It wasn’t the Greeks who said that, it was the Roman poet Juvenal–a point swiftly made by Sonnenschein’s adversaries as the Hyde Park debate raged on. A U. of C. alumnus and a former college professor, Grossman covered the conflict with an in-house grasp of its issues and passions. But on March 14 he went too far. Writing for the Perspective section, he contemplated the effect of the University of Chicago on those “whose minds were permanently etched there” and offered himself as exhibit A.
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It was lovely writing. And up to a point it asserted Grossman’s bona fides. But when a writer publicly describes one of two alternatives in conflict as Camelot, suggests even in jest that “we” go to court to prevent the other one, and admits that this “take” is the only one he’s capable of, he has stamped himself as a partisan. Too much of a partisan for top metro editor Paul Weingarten.
Third was the op-ed piece by law and ethics professor Martha Nussbaum denouncing the core, which ran in the Tribune on March 11. “I love rigor,” she wrote, “but I don’t love being told by some committee of 50 years ago what ideas of rigor I should follow.” More letters were not published. “An absurd critique of liberal education,” said one by alumnus Andrew Patner that was passed to me.
And Dodie Hofstetter, who edits the Tribune’s letters space, points out that she’d run several letters on the U. of C. turmoil before the editorial. The role of the editorial, it seems, was not to stir up argument but to resolve it.
If you’re like me, you picture an elite guild of code busters grimly tapping computer keys while a red digital readout clicks down to zero and the masses cringe and pray. What can a community do except stockpile canned goods and guns?
“Some very practical activity is under way,” says Lappe. For example, “a number of communities are pursuing a community-wide Y2K audit.” She referred me to an ANS story about a grassroots-business task force established in Santa Cruz. “Santa Cruz showed how to do a community audit to see which systems are most vulnerable.”
