Standing in the lobby of wheeler auditorium, I wonder if it's a mistake to audit this class. Along with a herd of freshmen and sophomores, I am waiting for the first lecture of History 7B: The History of American Society 1865–2007. No one is staring, but I'm still self-conscious. I'm a minority by race (white), age (61), and physical fitness (paunchy and sagging). I've chosen a spot next to a tarnished bronze bust of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, the same one that was here when I was a student in the sixties. We are alike, Benjamin and I, in our height, our stage of life, our 20th-century wardrobe, and our fatherliness. We make a good pair.

The lobby floods with light. It makes me squint, so I slip into the lecture hall and take a place in the last row. The room is almost as bright as the lobby, and the light blue cushions on the plastic seats give it the look of a suburban multiplex. I recall a dim space with hard seats, appropriate to the production of King Lear I once saw here.

"Fiat lux, indeed," I mutter.

The screen in the front of the auditorium flashes PowerPoint slides that conclude with the announcement that after 43 years and 30,000 students, this is the last time Professor Litwack '51, Ph.D. '58, will teach History 7B before retiring.

In 1966, what drew me to audit this class was the prospect of spending a semester sitting next to the young woman whom I followed everywhere that fall. She finally married me, and three decades later our son returned from his first year at Cal raving about taking U.S. history from Professor Litwack.

"That's the same guy your mom and I took the class from," I told him. "A good teacher, but, man, was he a lefty! I don't know if I could handle his kind of history now." Finally, from stage left, the man enters: Leon Litwack, whose Been in the Storm So Long won both a 1980 Pulitzer Prize and a 1981 National Book Award. A bona fide academic rock star. Like Benjamin Wheeler, he seems close to my age, much closer now than when I was 20 and he was nearing 40. He wears a leather jacket and a limp necktie. A lot less hair and a lot more gray, I see, but his gait is selfassured—the confident walk of a man in his element. He takes his place behind the podium and without preliminaries begins his lecture.

Litwack's reputation as a dispassionate Berkeley professor is deserved. He is the kind of teacher whom conservative talk-show hosts accuse of constituting a left-wing intellectual elite. His tone is authoritative, critical, even accusatory. Although I'm a registered Democrat who occasionally votes Green, I know he will make me uneasy. Litwack will remind me of unsolved problems and missed political opportunities. I expect tales of greed, racism, corruption, and perhaps genocide. He will say things I don't want to hear. He will imply that the luxuries of my middle-class life result from a fortunate birth. He will do his damnedest to wake me from my personal American dream.

Then I remember the advice I gave my kids when they left for college. I said that Berkeley was no vocational school and that they shouldn't worry about "what they would do" after graduation.

"Just be curious," I said. "Be open to what you hear. You'll never have a chance like this again, so question everything you think you know." But now I have to take that advice myself.

I glance at the course syllabus and read a litany of woes: failed Reconstruction, Indian wars, robber barons, Jim Crow, American imperialism, world war, Depression, more world war, Hiroshima, McCarthyism, Vietnam. This class won't be an Independence Day parade exalting government of, by, and for the people. I listen to what Litwack says and begin to fill my notebook, not just with his ideas but with questions to think about. What are the hidden costs of my middle-class complacency? What privileges come with being white? What does it mean to live in a democracy? To be an American?

Professor Litwack concludes, and I'm glad to see that Cal students still reward a provocative lecture with applause. I leave Wheeler Hall and step outside prepared to squint, but the brightness of the auditorium has made an easy transition. Sproul Plaza is its usual shopping mall of political convictions and undergraduate energy. Somehow I don't feel at all paunchy or old. I suck in my gut and lope surely across campus in the beaming sunshine.

Paul C. Dalmas '67 earned his teaching credential in 1970. He has taught high school English for 33 years.