When the politically correct crowd last tried to dumb down Brooklyn College’s core curriculum, back in 1997, they met with a memorable resistance. Fifteen prominent Brooklyn graduates — including historians Oscar Handlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Donald Kagan — organized a letter to fend off the proposed changes. In their successful efforts, the defenders of the core made the point that the core curriculum, a series of 10 required courses in things like “The Classical Origins of Western Culture,” and “Landmarks of Literature,” had attracted national recognition for the college. During the Reagan administration, a report written by the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William Bennett, cited the core in naming Brooklyn College as one of a few “bright spots” on the generally troubled landscape of American higher education. A 1987 New York Times editorial said, “The key to Brooklyn College’s success is a ‘core curriculum’ that was introduced in 1981.”

Now that Brooklyn is taking another look at its core curriculum, it’s worth paying attention. There are some troubling signs. As The New York Sun reported on March 18, the chairman of the Faculty Council’s core curriculum committee is a sociology professor, Timothy Shortell, who has called religious people “moral retards” and insisted, “It is not enough to be irreligious; we must use our critique to expose religion for what it is: sanctimonious nonsense.” Mr. Shortell is also a member of the general education outcomes assessment subcommittee, which also will play a role in revamping the core.

A Brooklyn College survey recently asked professors about what the goals of the general education curriculum should be. The survey struck us as slanted. Of 43 possible goals, none mentioned Aristotle, Shakespeare, economics, freedom, or capitalism. Three mentioned diversity, including, “A study of cultures other than one’s own, including the diverse cultures represented in the collegiate community at Brooklyn”; “Respect for diversity and difference in such areas as gender, race, class, and ethnicity,” and “Understanding and appreciation of the diversity of U.S. society.” Another possible general education goal that won significant support from the faculty was “Understanding and affirmation of one’s own identity.” Another was “interpersonal and social skills.”

We asked the Brooklyn College provost, Roberta Matthews, if there might be some who think that a core curriculum, or a college education in general, ought to be about imparting knowledge, rather than affirming identity. Indeed, she said, there might be some who hold that view, and she acknowledged that there’s no getting around the fact that conveying information is a significant part of any college curriculum. Still, she said that the idea that it ought to be the only goal is, as she put it, “a very outdated notion.”

Ms. Matthews has been known to pass around examples of “ground rules” for classrooms. One such rule, originally documented by Lynne Weber Cannon, would ask students to acknowledge that “one mechanism of institutionalized racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and the like is that we are all systematically misinformed about our own group and about members of other groups.” Pressed on the matter, Ms. Matthews said she believes the creation of ground rules for classes is “a very good idea.” As for that particular one, she said, “If a class agrees that they believe that, then it’s appropriate. If they don’t believe it, then it’s not appropriate.”

Thankfully, there’s some adult supervision of all this, in the form of the chancellor and trustees of the City University of New York, of which Brooklyn College is a part. They’ve already been helpful in intervening to give tenure to Professor Robert David “K.C.” Johnson of Brooklyn’s history department. It now looks like the history department chairman who so botched the Johnson case may be on his way out. We don’t mean to single out Brooklyn College for criticism; City University officials assure us that, as CUNY campuses go, Brooklyn is not even a particular hotbed of politically radical troublemakers. Ms. Matthews says the core review may result in no changes, small changes, or major changes. But Brooklyn’s core is one of the major good things about this city, and now is the time to pay attention to its fate.