College and Research Libraries


book is gracelessly written and madden-
ingly condescending but sheds light on 
a fascinating dimension of American in-
tellectual life. (Stephen Lehmann) 

Wiener, Jon. Professors, Politics and Pop. Lon-
don and New York: Verso, 1991. 366p. 
(ISBN 0-8W91-356-2). LC 91-025645. 
Jon Wiener, professor of history at the 

University of California, Irvine, covers 
the higher education beat for The Nation, 
where he is a contributing editor. Profes-
sors, Politics and Pop is a collection of 
short pieces from that weekly (October 
1984 through September 1990), plus a 
sprinkling of items from other mag-
azines of the center-left. A quartet of 
heftier considerations of recent radical 
history and historiography first ap-
peared as review articles in scholarly 
journals. Wiener has a nose for con-

Book Reviews 579 

troversy and likes to seek out subjects-
either persons or "cases"-that define 
the battle lines between the academic 
and cultural left and the center-right. 
Broadly speaking, he contends-and 
anecdotally demonstrates-that the en-
trenched establishment in academe is 
conservative (and not liberal or radical 
as one would conclude from the media 
of late) even though the left, at least his-
torically, enjoys superior intellectual cre-
dentials. Wiener manages to engage in 
this polemical discussion without using 
the much abused Newspeak phrase 
"politically correct." But that is definitely 
what he is talking about: the attempt of 
"the neocons ... to persuade the center 
that it's the left rather than the right that 
threatens the integrity of the university 
by injecting external political issues into 
academia." (Jeffry Larson)