Many current developments in American academic life - multiculturalism, rhetoric and hermeneutics, and deconstruction - have been inspired by the ideas of European philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Lyotard. In Europe the influence of these philosophers is restricted to a small coterie and their ideas have contributed to none of the wide-ranging social and institutional changes recently witnessed in some segments of American academia. Contributions are included by specialists on both sides of the doctrinal and ideological divide, so as to present a serious confrontation between those who see the influence of Derrida and others as benign or insignificant and those who perceive it as corrosive in its effects on academic standards in the US.