IN English 102,” a recent graduate of the University of .Nevada at Reno reports, “we had to write a letter putting ourselves in the shoes of a gay person, like breaking the news to our parents saying we were gay, and explaining our lifestyle to them.” That eye-opening announcement is not quoted in the work of Allan Bloom, Dinesh D’Souza, or Roger Kimball to expose political correctness on campus. It is from a new book by Martha Nussbaum, professor of ethics at the University of Chicago Law School. She wrote Cultivating Humanity† as a brief for the defense of the contemporary American university; but carefully read, it is more evidence of the crisis in American higher education.