What the Magna Carta, the 95 Theses, and Abraham Lincoln have in common is the inheritance of a Western ethos that constantly criticizes itself in an attempt to realize Western-generated ideals: the sovereignty of the individual, personal responsibility and the very ability to scrutinize itself for the betterment of ourselves and humanity. You’d be... See more

A return to disciplinary bedrock, an insistence that the methods and purposes that first defined the discipline be respected and, in some form or other, resuscitated. The conservative turn also, therefore, revives interest in the discipline’s history. It remembers and reappraises not just English’s pathways and achievements but also its core... See more

The academic discipline of history has, in recent decades, largely failed in its public duty. It has retreated from the consequential subjects of statecraft and strategy, seeing them as unworthy of scholarly pursuit. The rosters of tenured historians at major universities show a steep decline in scholars engaged with questions of war, peace and... See more

"Education at the edge of history can’t rely on the authority of educators brought up in a world that no longer exists..."