“It is imagination that governs the human race.” No professor of literature wrote those words: that is an aphorism of the master of the big battalions, Napoleon Bonaparte. In a time when we Americans ought to be entering upon an Augustan age, we seem enervated. A feeling of powerlessness oppresses many Americans. Even the [...]
Academic freedom permits the airing and defense of any and all views, but some views have come to be largely unacceptable in academia today. Since such views are not only socially unacceptable, but often discouraged or even prohibited as a matter of university policy, why should they not also be banned when they are articulated [...]
Books and wine and life—all are subjects of deep mystery, deep study, and deep human involvement. And all are subjects deeply implicated in liberal education. The connection between liberal education and the trio of books, wine, and life was apparent this past weekend, as St. John’s College in Annapolis hosted its fifth annual wine-tasting event. [...]
One of our slogans is libertarian means for non-libertarian ends. That one works especially well in education. A big danger to the moral and intellectual diversity that graces our country’s mixture of public and private education—especially higher education—is increasingly intrusive bureaucratic government and quasi-governmental entities, such as accrediting agencies. In this category of homogenizing intruders [...]
Universities were founded to sustain faith by reason—to maintain order in the soul and in the commonwealth. My own university, St. Andrews, was established in the fifteenth-century by the Scottish Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity to resist the errors of the Lollards, the levellers of that age. The early universities’ teaching imparted both order and freedom to [...]
For a little more than 100 years we have had standardized IQ tests, and over those 100 years there has been a consistent, linear increase in IQ scores, on the order of three points per decade. According to IQ tests, we are getting smarter. Also over the last 100 years, rates of belief in God [...]
So my reservations about Scott Walker as presidential candidate have to do with my reservations about his diagnosis concerning why higher education is not efficient and effective. The disease: Faculty do not teach and otherwise work hard enough, combined with the residual “shared governance” (between faculty and administration) that inhibits administrative innovation and makes proper [...]
The written word has obviously been crucial to the preservation and development of Western civilization. Without the invention of the alphabet and the printing press, or the widespread use of writing, you would not have access to the minds of those who contributed to Western thought. Considering that you live in a culture sculpted and hewn [...]
I certainly can join the chorus opposing President Barack Obama’s scheme to make the federal government the dominant partner in making community college free. That much money will be accompanied by a corresponding amount of regulation. Insofar as possible, community colleges should be community colleges, or creatures of states and localities. Not only that, community [...]
George Orwell wrote: “The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism.”[1] Though that may have been the case in 1946, the enemies of intellectual liberty on Western campuses today have little need to formulate reasoned defenses of their actions, due to the intellectual self-containment in the university [...]
It is a shocking reality that the vast majority of “teachers” have no idea what it means to be an “educated” human being. If this is true, and indeed it is demonstrable, then it should not be a surprise to learn that most Americans have no idea what it means to be a good teacher. [...]
So it is characteristic of us professors of political philosophy to neglect what is really going in the “hard” sciences. I remember, for example, being astonished that Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind, came close to saying that the one real thing in American universities otherwise deformed by relativism was natural science. [...]
Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) was one of the leading thinkers of the post–World War II conservative intellectual movement. Best known for his landmark book Ideas Have Consequences, Weaver was a scholar and rhetorician who taught English at the University of Chicago for almost thirty years. Here he offers insights on the meaning and purpose of [...]
So I just finished reading the most recent contributions to Postmodern Conservative. The quality is high, and the depth and breadth of insight is real. And I wish I could say something to show I am anywhere near their pay grade when it comes to classical or contemporary events. I agree with Peter Spiliakos that [...]