AS WE ALL know, a great curricular debate rages in our universities. On one side are the defenders of Western Civilization courses, and more generally of the canon of “Great Books” that have traditionally been considered the core of a liberal education. On the other side are proponents of “multicultural education,” who propose to replace or augment the canon with required courses in gender and ethnic studies, with numerous works by women and “people of color,” and with discussions of the relationships between literature and the “structures of power.”