The seventy-five-page interview with Lionel Trilling conducted in May 1968, which I recently discovered in the Oral History Research Office at Columbia, reveals for the first time his role in the dramatic and sometimes violent uprising at the university. A brilliant teacher, influential critic, and major figure in American intellectual life, Trilling suddenly moved from difficult books and disturbing ideas to confrontations with revolutionary students. During the most important political engagement of his life, he tested his ideas in the cauldron of reality. Diana Trilling, in her long account of the crisis called “On the Steps of Low Library” (1968), focused on her own reaction, ignored Lionel’s role in these events, and said: “my husband was still at the University, doing whatever it was that the faculty was then doing, or trying to do.” The unpublished Oral History interview explains what he did.

The crisis began with ...

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