In a post last week, I mentioned that Cho’s being an English major raised thoughts in my mind. I didn’t expand on this, but I meant something that I thought was fairly well understood as part of the conservative critique of the academy, that humanities education and literary studies in particular have given themselves over to postmodernism, to denying objective truth and normative behavior, to deconstructing ideals of traditional virtue, to encouraging resentment and entitlement, and to obviating individual responsibility while ascribing ills to forces beyond individual control.

Since I wrote, James Lewis has looked more in depth at the kinds of things taught at Virginia Tech and at the “scholarly” interests of the professors there. What he finds more than substantiates the conservative critique summarized above. Also, the poem he cites from the English Department website in response to the massacre takes the view that I mention above, ascribing ills to forces beyond individual control.

None of this proves a precise connection, of course, but it is surely enough to raise questions.

Clarence Darrow defended Leopold and Loeb by saying that they could not be held responsible for the cold-blooded murder that they had committed because they had been taught Nietzschean philosophy at the University of Chicago. (He got their sentence reduced from death to imprisonment.) At another point Lionel Trilling wondered about teaching modernist literature to young people, and how it seemed to make them too casual about “looking into the abyss.” It is legitimate to speculate about the effect of some teaching on young people and its possible connection to actions.