College curriculums that were once centered on instruction in the classics of Western civilization have become smorgasbords where almost anything qualifies as a course in the liberal arts and where political conformity is enforced by professors. Stanford University, caving in to demands from the Black Student Union ("We don't want to read any more dead white guys"), removed Homer, Dante, Luther, Darwin, and Freud from its course on Western civilization. At Dartmouth, a professor of women's studies describes the goal of her program as, simply, "the reconstruction of reality."

Sykes calls the abandonment of the great books a "startling triumph for unreason" and shows how American higher education is turning out hollow men and women--apathetic, ignorant, and empty of the civilizational patrimony that should be theirs.