Opinion | The Unpatriotic Academy (Published 1994)
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Unpatriotic Academy (Published 1994)
If I were to ventriloquize the New Right’s assessment of contemporary higher education, it would go something like this: Contemporary education is based on simplistic and ahistorical claims (about, for example, “power,” “neoliberalism,” or binaries of oppressors and oppressed) that are promoted by people who—as a professional class—tend to be
... See moreLaura K. Field • Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right
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
Our example, though, requires explanations, the kind the Founders gave to the world. And this is where we are failing: the dominant schools in American universities can tell the Chinese students only that they should avoid Eurocentrism, that rationalism has failed, that they should study non-Western cultures, and that bourgeois liberalism is the... See more
archive.ph
Would we necessarily say that government, civic life, the media, or high finance work better now than in the mid-20th century? We can scorn the smug WASP blue bloods from Groton and Choate—and certainly their era’s retrograde views of race and gender—but their leadership helped produce the Progressive movement, the New Deal, victory in World War... See more
David Brooks • How the Ivy League Broke America
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.”