Cary Nelson’s belle lettre to Antioch in this week’s Chronicle is enough to make anyone want to nail another board over the school’s windows. What did Antioch teach? Spunky ideas, like the following:
I used some of Lyndon Johnson’s antipoverty money to hire buses to take the program participants [inner-city children] to an antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, that experience was new to them as well. Bureaucracy being what it is, my little expenditure was never noticed.
The piece ends:
I always tell people, though they never believe me, that I could never have made it through any other college. There was no place like Antioch, with its mix of intellectual freedom, commitment to justice, and innovative program of courses and work experience. And if Antioch does indeed close, there may be no such place at all.
Yes. And?
