Donald Kagan is engaging in one last argument. For his “farewell lecture” here at Yale on Thursday afternoon, the 80-year-old scholar of ancient Greece””whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War inspired comparisons to Edward Gibbon’s Roman history””uncorked a biting critique of American higher education.
Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are “individualized, unfocused and scattered.” On campus, he said, “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” Rare are “faculty with atypical views,” he charged. “Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” By “our” he means Western….
Mr. Kagan offers another explanation. “You can’t have a fight,” he says one recent day at his office, “because you don’t have two sides. The other side won.”
Excellent article. The link however doesn’t work. The article is [url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323789704578446614144636002.html]here[/url].
Reminds me of http://bowdoinorient.com/article/8206
Thanks to both Ad Orientem and driver8 for the links. Elves, please fix the link, for this WSJ article is too good to be missed.
I loved the line about the commitment to diversity on most university campuses being only “skin deep.” Alas, so true. The eminent historian of American religion (and commited, orthodox Christian) George Marsden chronicled the sad story well in his insightful and thoroughly-documented 1994 study, [b]The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief[/b]. The subtitle really say it all.
The pervasive bias against conservative theology or politics is now so deeply entrenched that supposed “liberals” can display the most blatant anti-Christian prejudice without fear of criticism or rebuke. It’s what I like to call the A-B-C stance: Anything But Christianity! IOW, it’s a form of affirmative action at the level of ideology. The basic idea, seldom openly stated however, is that classical Christianity has been favored in western cutlure for so many centureis that it should be deliberately penalized for a considerable period in order to create a level playing field for other belief systems…
Allan Bloom was right back in 1987. The collective academic mind in America has indeed closed.
Thanks again to #1 & 2.
David Handy+