Allan David Bloom (September 14, 1930 – October 7, 1992) was an American
philosopher,
classicist, and
academician. He studied under
David Grene,
Leo Strauss,
Richard McKeon and
Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at
Cornell University, the
University of Toronto,
Yale University,
École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the
University of Chicago. Bloom championed the idea of
Great Books education and became famous for his criticism of contemporary American
higher education, with his views being expressed in his bestselling 1987 book,
The Closing of the American Mind. Characterized as a
conservative in the popular media, Bloom denied that he was a conservative, and asserted that what he sought to defend was the 'theoretical life'.
Saul Bellow wrote
Ravelstein, a
roman à clef based on Bloom, his friend and colleague at the University of Chicago.