[Keyes] criticized local efforts in favor of the civil rights movement and strongly supported the Vietnam War. After receiving death threats because of his political stances, Keyes left Cornell and continued his studies at Harvard University.

WORLD: Tell me about your college years.

KEYES: I started at Cornell University in 1968, then studied in Paris for a year, then I came back and transferred to Harvard. I was there the rest of the time, through my Ph.D.

WORLD: Those years were wild times for college students. How wild did things get for you?

KEYES: Wild enough that - have you read Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind"? There's a passage where he describes a black student who was harassed because he wouldn't go along with the tactics of the militants; that was me. I was getting myself into trouble even then. I resented the fact that I had gone to college to study, and they were breaking the place up. I had actually had a choice between Cornell and Harvard. I chose Cornell because they had a six-year Ph.D. program, and I was in a hurry. The second motivation was the rural atmosphere, the "Groves of Academe", where you could sit on a bridge listening to a waterfall as you read Plato. It was beautiful for a couple of months, then my pristine bubble was burst. It was an education of a sort I hadn't counted on getting.

Hey! I'm Shane... a proud gay progressive Democrat who has recently relocated to New York City from Ithaca, NY. As I am no longer in Ithaca, I haven't quite decided the fate of this blog.

Drop me a line!
shane@happilystuckinithaca.com

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