10 Books We Want Under the Tree in 2022. 'Tis the season for higher-ed reform.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | December 23, 2022 | Jenna A. Robinson

[karpov]

One of my favorite projects at the Martin Center is the cultivation of our higher-education library. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I vastly prefer to read books printed on paper instead of words on a screen; the Martin Center’s growing library gives me great joy.

At the end of last year, I set a goal for 2022: to have 850 books in the Martin Center’s collection. Thanks to our generous readers and donors, we’re almost there. As of today, we have 826 books. That’s almost 80 more than we had last year at this time. (You can view our catalog here.)

But our library is still far from complete. There are many classic and new books that we need to add to our shelves—and that I look forward to reading in the future. I’d like to reach our goal of having 850 books in the Martin Center library by the end of 2022. And by the end of 2023, I hope we can make it 1,000.

Here are 10 that I’d love to find under the Christmas tree to help us reach that goal:

1. The Treason of the Intellectuals by Julien Benda (1927)

From the editors:

Julien Benda’s classic study of 1920s Europe resonates today. The “treason of the intellectuals” is a phrase that evokes much but is inherently ambiguous. The book bearing this title is well known but little understood. This edition is introduced by Roger Kimball.

From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals were a breed apart. They were non-materialistic knowledge-seekers who believed in a universal humanism and represented a cornerstone of civilized society. According to Benda, this all began to change in the early twentieth century. In Europe in the 1920s, intellectuals began abandoning their attachment to traditional philosophical and scholarly ideals

[mykroar]

bfl

[KarlInOhio]

Full list of the books:
1. The Treason of the Intellectuals by Julien Benda (1927)
2. Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America by David E. Berstein (2022)
3. The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities by Alan Dershowitz (2021)
4. The Neuroscience of Intelligence by Richard J. Haier (2016)
5. Challenges to Academic Freedom by Joseph C. Hermanowicz (2021)
6. Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson (1988)
7. The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch (2004)
8. Epistemic Liberalism: A Defence by Adam James Tebble (2017)
9. The College Devaluation Crisis: Market Disruption, Diminishing ROI, and an Alternative Future of Learning by Jason Wingard (2022)
10. How Great Philanthropists Failed & How You Can Succeed at Protecting Your Legacy by Martin Morse Wooster (2018)