September 2, 2005

The Boss in the Classroom

By LOUIS P. MASUR

On a warm spring day near the end of the last academic year, I found myself in class dancing with a freshman girl to Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run."

I am not known as a particularly reserved professor. In teaching students that ideas matter, I try to bring passion to my courses in American cultural history: I do not mask my affection for such figures as Ben Franklin, Dorothea Lange, or Jackie Robinson; I've taken joy in reciting parts of Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of

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