The University of Texas at Austin has just approved the formation of a field of study for the recently-established Program In Western Civilization and American Institutions. This enables the center to begin offering great books-based classes on Greek and Roman Philosophy, literature, and the American founding, among other topics. It’s a broad step forward for […]
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Good friends of the Manhattan Institute were among the winners of the 2007 National Arts and Humanities Medals bestowed today at the White House by President Bush. Among them were Roger Hertog, chairman emeritus of the Institute’s board of trustees, Stephen H. Balch, founder and longtime president of the National Association of Scholars, and author […]
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Brown University has been described as providing “the worst education in America.” Brown’s New Curriculum, far from requiring that students read a list of Great Books, has no core of any kind. Brown students are free to “shop” their courses and take only the ones they like. Brown’s libertarian attitude toward curricular structure no doubt […]
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The study of professors’ views by Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons confirms much of what we already knew: there are more liberals than conservatives working in academia, and the ratio increases in the humanities and social sciences, as well as at more elite universities. However, the survey does show an important fact, that […]
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An excerpt from the new book Education’s End, Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life by Anthony T. Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School (Yale University Press) By the early 1970s, the humanities were floundering. Ideological rifts were widening. Traditional ways of teaching had lost much of […]
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Peter Berkowitz appears today in the Wall Street Journal writing on “Our Compassless Colleges.” At universities and colleges throughout the land, undergraduates and their parents pay large sums of money for — and federal and state governments contribute sizeable tax exemptions to support – “liberal” education. This despite administrators and faculty lacking, or failing to […]
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Robert George and Cornel West have teamed up in an unlikely enterprise – co-teaching a Freshmen Seminar, “Great Books and Arguments” at Princeton. You can find the full story in the June issue of the Princeton Alumni magazine. George and West seem to radiate enthusiasm about the collaboration, and, particularly, about the challenges to their […]
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