Dear Sahil, if I may call you by your given name, I look forward to your book and I do not doubt premise that conformists are vast majority of most generations - and classes and parties- and people generally I do however strongly disagree with Louis Menand that it does not matter if students are taught Milton by victim studies bigot (of either sex) who dwells on his purported misogyny rather than by scholar who values - or at least knows about - his defense of religious and intellectual liberty during English Civil War. There is no more wonderful defense of press freedom in English than his Aeropagitica, 1644, which an academic- not I am happy to say teaching at Harvard - told me a year or so ago is rarely assigned now because it is too difficult. If you have not read it I urge you to do so. Also his work On Education, liberal education: should fit student “to perform justly, skilfully (sic), and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.”

I am appalled by much of what is done and not done by faculty and administration today but I am Radcliffe ‘63 and taught at Harvard for a bit so I am very old-fashioned. Many of my teachers were of the Greatest Generation and several were exiles from a variety of totalitarian regimes

Every good wish for your brilliant future Kate Auspitz