Free Republic

The debate over the Left's domination of the modern university has always been an emotional one, and my recent two-part TCS article on the subject has certainly generated some passionate responses. Most of these were from conservative professors, students, and parents who feel besieged and were gratified to read something that takes their concerns seriously. But there were also some objections, to which I'd like to respond. Some of these were serious. Some were not at all serious -- despite their having been made by people who evidently take themselves pretty seriously. The Professors Weigh In To take the latter...

It is said of Woodrow Wilson that when asked what the purpose of a liberal education is, he replied "To make a person as unlike his father as possible." He was, at the time, merely the president of Princeton University, and had not yet become schoolmarm-in-chief of the United States or waged the war that ended all wars and made the world safe for democracy. But as with his better-known schemes of social uplift and gauzy internationalism, so too with his philosophy of education, Wilson was the very model of the progressive academic. Whatever bland official statement of purpose might...

The hegemony of the Left over the universities is so overwhelming that not even Leftists deny it. Whether the institution is public or private, a community college or an Ivy League campus, you can with absolute confidence predict that the curriculum will be suffused with themes such as: capitalism is inherently unjust, dehumanizing, and impoverishing; socialism, whatever its practical failures, is motivated by the highest ideals and that its luminaries -- especially Marx -- have much to teach us; globalization hurts the poor of the Third World; natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate and that human industrial...

It has become the conventional wisdom in the two years since 9/11 that the trouble with Islam is that, unlike Christianity, it never had a Protestant Reformation. The idea seems to be this: Christianity was (so it is held) rigid and authoritarian before Luther and company came along and paved the way for liberal democracy, science, and all things modern and good; Islam's problem is that it remains stuck in its "Medieval phase," still awaiting Reformers of its own. This analysis dovetails nicely with the conceptions most people have these days of the Reformation, of traditional Catholicism, and of freedom...

It has become the conventional wisdom in the two years since 9/11 that the trouble with Islam is that, unlike Christianity, it never had a Protestant Reformation. The idea seems to be this: Christianity was (so it is held) rigid and authoritarian before Luther and company came along and paved the way for liberal democracy, science, and all things modern and good; Islam's problem is that it remains stuck in its "Medieval phase," still awaiting Reformers of its own.  This analysis dovetails nicely with the conceptions most people have these days of the Reformation, of traditional Catholicism, and of...

The notion that the political alliance between libertarians and conservatives is contingent and inherently unstable has become a cliché, and a tiresome one at that, usually made by persons who have little understanding of either libertarianism or conservatism. And despite appearances, the recent testy exchanges between the conservative National Review’s Jonah Goldberg and the libertarian Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie and Virginia Postrel do nothing to confirm the cliché.It is not that the idea of a fusion of libertarianism and conservatism does not raise important and difficult philosophical issues; it does. The emphasis within traditional conservative thinking on authority, including the ...

As a Bush re-election later this year looks increasingly likely, some left-wingers worry that Howard Dean is too risky a candidate to put up against a popular President. There is, of course, the obvious comparison to McGovern and the fear that a true believer may inevitably be a sure loser. There is also the worry that Dean may not in fact be so true a believer in the first place: he did support Newt Gingrich's Medicare reforms, after all, and has been a little too cozy with gun rights advocates; might he not betray the Left in order to appeal...