THE PURPOSE OF THIS COURSE is to prepare you for the intellectual life of a university, i.e., to help you get the most out of your education by seeing what an education is supposed to be. To do this we will study the classic structure of universities, as reflected at Hunter College, and then discuss challenges to that structure that have been offered in the past thirty-five years in the name of multicultural diversity. This includes not only a discussion about curriculum, but also about the duties and responsibilities of professors and students, the entire intellectual organization of colleges and universities, the relationship between academic politics and national politics, and the relationship between popular culture and academic culture. The course emphasizes clear writing and logical thinking and organization. I am a professional philosopher, but this is not a philosophy course. Nevertheless, the class is still a guide to the pleasures of the intellect; I hope to show you how much pure intellectual pleasure one can get by thinking hard about something difficult. So, you could say this is a course in intellectual hedonism, an attempt to get you to love thinking, not just by describing to you what sorts of thinking lie ahead of you, but demonstrating the virtues of a life of the mind through our subject matter. I consider such a pursuit to be a supreme good in life, and I will try hard to convince you of that, too (if you aren't already convinced!).