Allan Bloom publishes "The Closing of the American Mind," launching conservative campaign to reassert Western curriculum in universities

University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom published "The Closing of the American Mind" in April 1987, arguing that American universities had abandoned Western intellectual traditions in favor of relativism and multicultural curriculum. The book spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over a million copies, giving the conservative critique of multicultural education a mainstream intellectual framework. Bloom argued that students' inability to defend Western values left them intellectually adrift. The John M. Olin Foundation, which had been funding conservative intellectual infrastructure since 1977, supported Bloom's work and the broader campaign to restore Western civilization requirements at American universities.