Don't Cry, Don't Raise Your Eye

The editors of the New York Times op-ed page continue their recent literary bent, inviting Michael Chabon to comment on the recent turn of events at San Francisco's Academy of Art University. (Readers who need a recap can turn to the original Chronicle article.) Chabon offers a keen insight into the necessity of allowing for free, unfettered expression of teenage angst:

In this light the Bill of Rights can be read as a classic expression of the teenage spirit: a powerful imagination reacting to a history of overwhelming institutional repression, hypocrisy, chicanery and weakness. It is a document written by men who, like teenagers, knew their enemy intimately, and saw in themselves all the potential they possessed to one day become him. We tend to view idealism and cynicism as opposites, when in fact neither possesses any merit or power unless tempered by, fused with, the other. The Bill of Rights is the fruit of that kind of fusion; so is the teenage imagination.