These days, he is mostly known as a German scholar who hid his youthful membership in the SS while publicly affirming support of Germany’s left-wing Social Democratic party. But Jonathan Brent, editorial director of the Yale University Press, shows us in the September 8th installment of the Chronicle of Higher Education that Grass has long been ambivalent, at best about the nature of totalitarian governments. Moreover, Brent has found that this ambivalence is alarmingly typical of students and can have disastrous global implications in the work of graduates. In 1987, Brent and Irving Howe got a chance to see Grass...