Jacoby's
occasion for recycling this tired truism is David Gelernter's new book, America - Lite: How Imperial Academia
Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats), which he thinks is short on arguments and full of shrill right - wing clichés about tenured radicals and rootless intellectuals.
Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, nationwide efforts to
dismantle segregation and integrate schools through anti-discrimination lawsuits, although modestly successful on
occasion, have ultimately foundered, producing neither dramatic racial integration nor significant improvements in academic outcomes
for black students.