Drinks, Cheap. Discussion, Priceless.

A 1920s Greenwich Village-style salon in Quincy House? John C. McMillian, resident tutor and lecturer on history and literature, thinks so. His evening chat sessions—so far there have been five—have covered topics like withdrawal from Iraq and global famine relief. Heavy stuff for a Friday night. Tonight’s topic: “If you were in charge of the war on terror, what would you do?”

Sipping cheap Merlot from a clear plastic cup, McMillian awaits the arrival of his guests. Barely audible ’60s rock music pumps out of a pair of speakers on the mantelpiece, under which a few logs of wood sit patiently in the fireplace. But McMillian almost never uses it. “It smells terrible when I have a fire,” he says. One wall of the room is covered end to end with hundreds of 1960s and beat-movement books that rest on three connected bookshelves.

Okay, so it’s not exactly the same ambiance that those non-conformist leftists of the early 20th-century coffee-houses had, but it’s close enough.

The fashionably-late guests arrive at 45 past the hour, representing a melange of undergraduates, grad students, and professors ranging from Crimson columnist Lucy M. Caldwell ’09 to special guest Jeremy P. Varon, a friend of John’s and a professor of history at Drew University.

McMillian begins the conversation. “We need to drain the swamp that breeds this radical ideology,” he says, referring to the groups of radical terrorists Islamists.

“But how do you drain the swamp?” asks Thomas H. Baranga, an economics teaching fellow and tutor in Quincy.

And of course, the conversation lasts for hours. But it’s not totally aimless.

“It’s a more focused discussion than at a bar or in a dining hall, but our conversation is allowed to wander,” admits McMillian.

In the wee hours of the morning, McMillian’s eight erudite guests trickle off into the rainy night, all the wiser for having participated in the powerful discussion. Cambridge in 2006 might not be the Village in the 1920’s, but that won’t stop McMillian from hosting his salon every Friday night for the rest of the year. “I have a great capacity for drinking beer and talking politics,” he says.