After Bitter Campus Battles, the `Great Books' Rise Again (nyt)

Not surprisingly, students of all backgrounds are more likely to read in an open-minded and non-racialist fashion than are grievance-mongering racially-obsessed faculty ideologues 

Defying small-minded multiculturalist critics, Great Books programs achieve success.

"If I wanted to learn more about black writers, Hispanic writers, minority writers, I'd take a course in Aztec culture or Mexican culture," said Oscar Martinez, a 23-year-old Mexican immigrant who studied Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" with Professor Gans last semester. "I'm here to make myself a more intellectual person, regardless of my race, regardless of my background."

...

One of Professor Gans's students, Keith Morgan, 31, who enrolled at Wright after he left the Army as a sergeant in 1996, said he had seen much of himself in the story of another returning veteran: Jay Gatsby. No matter that "The Great Gatsby" and its creator, F. Scott Fitzgerald, were white, and Mr. Morgan is black.

"I have a dream, just like Gatsby, to be successful," said Mr. Morgan, who hopes to become a guidance counselor and thinks a knowledge of the Western classics will help.

"To me, as a black man, you have to get past your color and just appreciate what's being written," Mr. Morgan continued. "Professor Gans chooses really good titles."