In discussing race relations or feminism my students often say that things are getting better, frequently as a preface (e.g. “Even though race relations have improved, we must still … ”). It is a general assumption that U.S. social history is a story of progress. There are temporary setbacks, but the trajectory is upward: We are better today than yesterday, will be better tomorrow than today.

I have been dreading, since deciding to quit grad school to pursue journalism, the ego-crushing task of finding a job — the unreturned calls and emails, submitted résumés lost to the abyss of corporate career sites and the self-doubt and desperation that come with rejection. Given the economy, perhaps now was not the best time to make this decision, but one of my personal traits is a penchant for deciding on a course of action with only minimal consideration of its feasibility. Perhaps this (naïve but motivating) faith in my ability to accomplish things is what made looking for jobs so discouraging the first time I did so. My first post-college job interview was with Bloomberg for a position as an entry-level business analyst and to this day I cringe when I think about it. It can only be described as a primer on what not to do. With the breezy confidence of 22, I waited by the phone for the representative to call. I don’t remember much of the substance of the conversation except for a short discussion on whether the company would take on people with no experience in finance. The woman told me many people at Bloomberg did not have degrees in finance and that in fact the woman sitting beside her had been an English major. The exchange was cordial and light until she asked me what it was that Bloomberg did and I answered that it was a financial services company. When she asked me to be more specific and explain what that meant, I admitted, “I don’t quite know what Bloomberg does,” hoping she would appreciate my honesty. (Besides, wasn’t she the one who was supposed to tell me?) She wrapped up suddenly by asking if I had any questions. I asked what seemed to be at the time the most pertinent question, or at least the question that concerned me most given that, from the moment I graduated from college, my parents urged me to start supporting myself. And it was the central piece of information missing from the job posting: How much do you pay?

I have written before about “intellectual diversity,” which presupposes a sweeping view of American intellectual history in which a “nutritious” diet of Great Books was hijacked by liberals in the ’60s and replaced with feminist and race studies. In this nostalgic fantasy, students in crisp button-downs discussed the Aeneid en plein air until, at midnight on December 31, 1959, they metamorphized into bra-burning protest fanatics. A recent grant of $50,000 from the Veritas Fund for Higher Education — in case it were unclear who is on the side of truth — has been earmarked to combat the persistent “cynosure of student rebellion” at Cornell. The goals of the proposed Cornell Program on Freedom and Free Societies are sufficiently vague: “[bring] intellectual pluralism” to the University, teach “traditional American history” and “bring back triumphalism to moderate the excesses of gender and [diversity courses].”