Columbia Philosophy Professor David Sidorsky is skeptical about revisionist history. He wonders, "whether revisionism represents correction history, or whether it represents simply what the fashions in the academy come up with." I told him that I thought it could be both, and he looked off into the distance. "In theory it's both," he shook his head, "in practice, I don't know if there ever is revisionist history based on reexamining the data and coming up with a contrary hypothesis."
Sidorsky's office, like the others on the seventh floor of Philosophy Hall, is old and the color of the walls has faded, but heavy wooden molding and inset bookcases convey the gravitas reminding visitors that the paint was once fresh and Jacques Barzun was once provost. Sidorsky remembers the gravitas—when an air of aristocracy and noblesse oblige pervaded the university and Columbia College was wary of letting professors trained in Europe teach its courses. For 49 years, Sidorsky has taught political philosophy, history of philosophy, and literary theory. He smiles slyly, and often appears lost in thought, but when he speaks, sentences on every subject pour forth fully-formed, without the ums and likes of less refined thinkers.
Sidorsky has a story for every occasion, and he remembers the Lionel Trilling-Jacques Barzun era in minute detail. "Well, I knew Barzun and Trilling very slightly," he told me, "Our department had a chip on its shoulder against Barzun, I think unjustly. They felt he shouldn't be interfering in our business." At the time, General Studies, Columbia College, Barnard, and the graduate school were all rigidly separated—Sidorsky taught in GS before receiving his Ph.D., and hardcore CC partisans like Trilling would only teach the College—and the College would not allow GS to grant a B.A.. "GS gave a Bachelor of Science—even to people who majored in English" Sidorsky said. "The college had a very fine esprit de corps. There was no sense then of the need to go co-ed. But, when it happened it improved the academic standing of the college."
Sidorsky's own education at New York University and the New School brought him into contact with some of the premier European thinkers of the era. He befriended German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who lived in Morningside Heights, and he has the distinction of having studied—albeit briefly—with the pre-Straussian Leo Strauss. Sidorsky recalled Strauss's teaching style: "Hobbes he taught straight—he didn't teach the esoteric. Spinoza he taught fairly straight. Rousseau he taught very straight... He didn't really become Straussian, and have all those conservative students, until he went to Chicago."
Then, Sidorsky came to Columbia. A story: sometime in the late nineteen-teens, Frank Tannenbaum, a young Austrian anarchist, let some homeless people into a church, breaking open the door and criminally trespassing. He went to jail, but the penal system and the judge liked him, so they sent him to Columbia. The dean at the time wanted to make sure that Tannenbaum didn't get in trouble—he was, after all, an ex-convict and the student body was mostly WASPs. Undergraduate Albert Redpath, of the financial brokerage firm Auchincloss, Parker, Redpath, was called in by this dean who said: "There's this fellow Frank Tannenbaum, and I want you to go to lunch with him and some other fellows to see that everything is going straight, that he's happy and getting educated. I'll pay for the lunch."
"But who should I take?" asked young Albert.
"Take some straightforward kids," the dean told him. Redpath happened to be enrolled in a philosophy course in which alphabetized seating was required, and so he sat next to one John Herman Randall, Jr. (When Randall was in his twenties he would write The Origins of the Western Mind, which would form the basis of Contemporary Civilization.) Randall's father was pastor of the liberal Community Church, and Randall was a very bright kid. So, Redpath thought, I'll take Randall to lunch. Randall, in turn, knew other philosophy students—Horace Friess, whose father was the principal of Randall's high school, and James Guttman. So, they all had lunch at the Faculty House every Thursday. In fact, those four had lunch together from 1918 until—give or take—1970.
"Our department was very collegial," Sidorsky remembered. He worked with them all: Randall, Guttman, Friess—all heirs to that other famous Columbian, John Dewey—and opponents of Sidney Hook, Communist-cum-Trotskyite-cum-neoconservative, and Sidorsky's former teacher. (Incidentally, Sidorsky gave the keynote address at the Hook centennial, when prominent conservatives like Irving Kristol and Hilton Kramer dropped out, disagreeing with Cornel West's appearance at the event. "West was grateful," Sidorsky chuckled.")
He can also point out the building on Broadway where Dewey cheated on his first wife, Alice, and was acquainted with his second wife, Roberta. He particularly remembers one lunch he had with Roberta, right around the time Ernest Nagel, Columbia philosopher of science and not a pragmatist, argued that Dewey knew little about the hard sciences. "I once was having lunch with Roberta Dewey," Sidorsky said. "She was a very good cook, and she cooked some really good gefilte fish, really good gefilte fish-balls. And she said to me, very aggressively, 'How does Ernest Nagel say that [Dewey] doesn't really know science?' And, I said, 'Well, he meant technical physics, he didn't mean he doesn't know science.' But, she said 'No, no!' We spent vacations in the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, and there was a general store there with a little quiz and you had to answer five questions and you'd get the prize. And there were five scientific questions, and Dewey would knock them off like nothing—every time there were new questions, five questions—BOOM! All five, get the prize. How does Nagel say he doesn't know science?'"
As Sidorsky took another breath to continue his story, the clanging of a fire bell interrupted his near-monologue. For several minutes, he was content to scream above the din, but soon began a slow descent from the top of Philosophy Hall. Along the way, he recounted the story of his friend Charles Frankel, who was the last in line of Columbia Deweyans to have studied directly with the man. "Charlie Frankel was a hard-headed liberal Democrat who became Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs and is the father of the National Endowment for the Humanities," Sidorsky told me. "Tragically, there was a time when this neighborhood was not so good, [and] Frankel decided to move up to Bedford. Frankel spoke for the General Education Conference and a very interesting thing happened. At the end of his speech, Quentin Anderson, who is one of the great professors of American literature at Columbia, said to Charles Frankel, whose Ph.D. thesis was on the French Enlightenment, 'Charlie, you still believe in optimism about human nature, you still don't recognize the evil in human nature.' And he said, 'Yes I do! I've just been speaking about human rights and what the good parts are about human rights, and the bad parts. I've always recognized evil.' And he pointed at me and said, 'Don't you agree David?' And I said, 'No Charlie, I agree with Quentin. You and Deweyan optimism don't recognize evil implicit in human nature.'
"About a month later, for some crazy reason, a group of Rastafarians drove up to Bedford, killed the woman in the house next door to Frankel and then murdered Frankel and his wife." Sidorsky shook his head. "Maybe he's right! Maybe original sin is the wrong way to look at human beings. But, anyway, the story works against Charles." 
