SOURCE: "The State of Letters: Can Literary Study be Politically Correct?," in the Sewanee Review, Vol. C, No. 2, April-June, 1992, pp. 283-89.

In the following essay, Bornstein criticizes the narrowness of political correctness, particularly when applied to literary study, which he argues should not be a limiting exercise.

At the height of the terror that established Bolshevism in the Soviet Union, Lenin reportedly sent a famous telegram exclaiming indignantly "We're not shooting enough professors." That was political correctness with a vengeance. The incident reminds us that political correctness is nothing new, that it tends toward the authoritarian, and that it is not likely to contribute much to the welfare, or even the survival, of the professoriate. Although in the last two years one hears the term political correctness most loudly from conservative opponents of recent academic trends, the phrase itself has a more complicated history. For example communist intellectuals...