As Congress prepares to step up its investigation into the President's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, some of the most sought-after political pundits are airing their views daily in Harvard's classrooms.

Professors from a range of disciplines--including English and women's studies--are joining the fray.

Political Pornography?

One such commentator is Stephen J. Greenblatt, a professor of English whose work focuses on Renaissance literature and culture. Greenblatt recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he compared the Starr report to a work of great literature.

According to Greenblatt, Americans have been comfortable with graphic descriptions of sex in fictional works for many years. But the Starr report marks a first because the acts it exposes are real.

"The Starr report might be out ahead of what people are willing to tolerate, but its where we've been moving," Greenblatt says. "Americans have been moving for some years toward an increasingly invasive view toward people's private lives."

Still, Greenblatt says Americans are not comfortable with the level of explicit detail that has become available.

The article he first submitted to The New York Times, he says, hinged on one particularly graphic passage from the Starr report. But editors told him they would not reproduce the excerpt in his column, even though they had already published it as part of the full text of the report.

While Greenblatt says he was at first annoyed by the change, he later came to agree with the cut.

"It was better for me not to participate in disseminating this level of detail if I was protesting this level of detail," he says.

Professor of Government Seyla Benhabib, who teaches Moral Reasoning 50: "The Public and Private in Politics, Morality and Law," says the explicit nature of recent political discourse is the result of a long-term change in the social acceptability of public conversations about private affairs.

"There has been an incredible explosion in the last 20-25 years of talking about sex and intimacy," Benhabib says. "The media has led a great revolution."

"Let-it-all-hang-out" television shows, such as The Jerry Springer Show, have caused "a total commercialization and vulgarization of intimacy," she adds.

A Private Affair

But despite intense public interest in the intimate lives of elected officials, private affairs are not to be equated with matters of state, said Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel.