The contemporary university is a tangled and troubled mess. In The Skies of Babylon, Barry Bercier attempts to help us see through and beyond the ideological fog that envelops academia by beginning with a simple thesis: the university should exist in service to the desire to teach. Bercier sees in that desire something very close to the desire for life itself, since through teaching one passes on to others the way of life one has received. When measured against that desire, today"s colleges and universities are abysmal failures, argues Bercier. The contemporary university is at war with its past and in angry denial of its origins. It is about the business of cultural parricide - and seeks precisely to induct young people into its work. Under the rubric of "diversity," it searches for anything other than its own identity. Academic games, careerism, the elaboration of a cynical and sterile politics, the production of systems of social-scientific control for the management of a...