“The only way to begin any new endeavor is with a sense of excitement about life. In connection to that, Anthony Kronman has a bracing book on American higher education, its purposes and problems. Mr. Kronman, a professor and former dean at Yale Law School, observes the academy in which he's spent his career and doesn't like everything he sees. He is generally progressive yet opposes the leveling produced by the steamroller of prevalent political, cultural and educational attitudes. It is a rich book, densely argued. I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it's more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.”
— Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
Description
“I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy.
College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing—over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students—has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem.
“Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues.
Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society—and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.
Reviews
“Today’s students are not chafing under some bow-tied patriarchal WASP dispensation. Instead, they are the beneficiaries of a system put in place by professors and administrators whose political views are almost uniformly left-wing and whose campus policies indulge nearly every progressive orthodoxy. So why all the rage? The answer lies in the title of Anthony Kronman’s necessary, humane and brave new book: The Assault on American Excellence.”
— Bret Stephens, The New York Times
“What would happen if the academy lost its reverence for excellence and instead took on the virtues and methods of argumentation found in political life? Universities would lose their souls, as Anthony Kronman shows in this brilliant book. He weaves together legal and intellectual history, a humane concern for students, and a love of the life of the mind to diagnose the core confusion undermining the confidence and coherence of the academy. The book is beautifully written, it is erudite yet accessible, and it is essential for any discussion of the future of higher education—or of liberal democracy.”
— Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business and New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind
“As a new generation of college students gets ready to return to campus, I’m reminded of the late Allan Bloom, the University of Chicago professor… No one had any reason to expect his 1987 book with the stuffy title The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students to be a bestseller. But it was… Now decades after Bloom, a new book by Anthony Kronman, former dean of Yale Law School, in some ways picks up where Bloom left off. But Kronman’s book is enlivened by the new era of Black Lives Matter, antifa and a new campus culture that too often values ‘feelings’ and ‘safety’ over the fundamental values of free speech and rational arguments.”
— Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
