About this item
From public intellectual and professor Robert Boyers, a thought-provoking volume of nine essays that elegantly and fiercely addresses recent developments in American culture and argues for the tolerance of difference that is at the heart of the liberal tradition.Written from the perspective of a liberal intellectual who has spent a lifetime as a writer, editor, and college professor, The Tyranny of Virtue is a precise and nuanced insider's look at shifts in American culture - most especially in the American academy - that so many people find alarming. Part memoir and part polemic, an anatomy of important and dangerous ideas, and a cri de coeur lamenting the erosion of standard liberal values, Boyers's collection of essays is devoted to such subjects as tolerance, identity, privilege, appropriation, diversity, and ableism that have turned academic life into a minefield.
About the Author
Robert Boyers is the author of eleven books, the most recent of which is The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, The Academy and the Hunt for Political Heresies. The book is a combination of memoir and cultural criticism, which draws upon a lifetime as editor (salmagundi magazine) , writing program director (the new york state summer writers institute) , college professor and frequent contributor to such national magazines as The Nation, Harpers, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New Republic. Boyers' previous books include a book of short stories, a volume of personal essays on the fate of ideas (including authority, the other, beauty, judgment and fidelity) , and several works on the politics of novels and novelists.
