The Need to Reclaim Liberal Education

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 3, 2026 | George Leef

[karpov]

Peter Berkowitz is one of those rare public intellectuals who doesn’t mind being on the “wrong” side of hot controversies—which is to say, he’s willing to clash with the “progressive” juggernaut. A former professor at Harvard and George Mason Law School, Berkowitz is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book, Reclaiming Liberal Education in America, is a collection of his essays on higher education written between 2014 and 2025. They give the reader a comprehensive view of the problems that beset our colleges and universities.

He writes, “The nation’s elite institutions of higher education have gone well beyond leaving many students ignorant of the nation’s founding principles and sustaining political institutions. For some time now, numerous classes, academic writings, and even fields of study have disposed students to despise those principles and institutions.” And no, “despise” is not too strong a word. As the book repeatedly shows, college courses are often taught with the objective of turning students into zealots for a thorough transformation of America. Many never hear anything good about our constitutional system, property rights, or free enterprise—only criticisms.

Berkowitz is an enthusiast for liberal education. A truly liberal education, he states, “fosters virtues of freedom and equips students to prosper in and maintain a free society.” It also teaches them to appreciate the fallibility of the human mind and to respect the rights of others to live their lives as they think best. Liberal education is conducive to a harmonious society and was in large measure responsible for our success.

Unfortunately, there are well-organized interests that want to use education not for liberal purposes but instead for illiberal ones.

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TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education
KEYWORDS: college

[Berosus]

No thanks, we need more conservative education.

[Maine Mariner]

I think what the author has in mind is a traditional liberal arts education which includes reading the US constitution, and works by Adam Smith, Locke, etc. or at least serious study of their works. Ditch Zim and read A Patriot’s History of the United States by Larry Schweikart (our own LS) and Michael Allen.

It would also bring back a traditional one academic year in length, Western Civilization.

[blackpacific]

Thomas Aquinas College(TAC)in Santa Paula, CA does a great job of teaching Liberal Arts through the use of the Great Books of the Western World in a four year dedicated BA. Wyoming Catholic College(WCC) is doing something similar. My two eldest daughters graduated from TAC, and my second angry white male is going to WCC. When they graduate from those programs they have the ability to reason along with the desire to be holy. Then they go out into the world and enrich it.

[Fledermaus]

Liberal isn’t meant in that context.

It means a wide education of arts, literature, sciences, etc.

Not left or right.

[bobbo666]

The only way to do that requires balls.

Any discrimination must lead to criminal prosecution and jail of Uni admins involved.

Any Uni that persists in censoring free speech loses all Fed funds for anything (even medical research) until they fix that to the satisfaction of a Fed-appointed overseer — like prisons have to do.

[Carry_Okie]

Another serious departure from the ideals of liberal education is the way college leaders today feel that it’s fitting or even necessary for them to give their opinions about every controversy.

Socialism makes the control of all property political. That suits the people who control the government just fine; i.e., its creditors.

[MV=PY]

The author means the original definition of the word liberal, before the left co-opted it and refined it for us.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Hoping that some wealthy conservatives can buy up some of the colleges that are going to fail over the next 10 years and turn them into actual centers of learning.