THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN MIND: Canons, Culture, and History.

By Lawrence W. Levine. Beacon. 240 pp. $20

One of America's most accomplished historians, Levine has made a distinguished career out of championing subjects--the world of William Jennings Bryan, the culture and consciousness of black slaves, the vitality of popular culture--long ignored or disdained by traditional historians. In his new book, Levine provides a spirited apologia for that career, and a celebratory defense of the modern university---accompanied by a fierce polemic against those, ranging from Allan Bloom to C. Vann Woodward, who (it seems) would like nothing better than to consign such subjects to the outermost darkness.

The results are, to say the least, uneven. As a brief for the opening of historical and literary studies to nontraditional topics and perspectives, based upon an appreciation of the fluidity and dynamism of American society, the book is convincing. Though much of what is offered here is a more-than-twicetold tale, it is good to be reminded of how unendurably narrow and stupefying most "higher education" has been throughout American history--and how long it took for American authors, even such now-canonical writers as Herman Melville and Walt Whitman, to be taken seriously within the Anglophile precincts of the academy. Measured against such a cramped standard, and considering the limited range of human types permitted to attend college in those days, today's universities look very attractive indeed.

In addition, Levine correctly points out that many of the contemporary critics of higher education have themselves been guilty of sloppy research and excessive rhetoric. He is right that the accusation of "political correctness" is used far too promiscuously and that talented students have always found--and will always find--ways to work around the peeves and prejudices of their teachers. Moreover, it is surely a salutary thing to have the experience of those who are not members of "hegemonic elites" represented in the historical record of a nation as diverse as this one.

But Levine repeatedly goes overboard in fulminating against critics and traditionalists. In the end, he damages his own credibility by disparaging such people as mere case studies of what Richard Hofstadter once called "the paranoid style," rather than acknowledging the elements in their critique that are accurate. For example, he dismisses as perfervid fantasy the notion that the historical professoriate is dominated by the radical Left. He argues that the fragmenting of the subject of history into countless multiculturalist pieces is something that had to happen, because historical writing always "reflects reality"--in this case, "the Zeitgeist" of a changing America. But if these assertions are true, then why has the growing political and social conservatism of the American people, consistently reflected in electoral results and polling data for nearly three decades, been so unreflected in the academy, where the opinion trends have over those years run dramatically in the opposite direction? Levine would have done better to address himself frankly to such disparities, rather than to airily proclaim that they do not exist.