National Post (National Edition)
In the shadow of the Great Books
Leftist ideologies so dominate the humanities on Western campuses that academia is perceived as a liberal vocation, with conservative scholars a lonely minority.
Who but a liberal grad student would warm, for example, to Princeton University’s English department’s offer of “a wide range of theoretical specializations in fields such as feminist theory, gender studies, psychoanalysis, [and] Marxism”?
But the tide has been turning. Last week, venerated yet controversial 80-year old classics scholar Donald Kagan gave his farewell address at Yale University, reiterating themes from the 1990s when, as Dean of Yale College, he was called a “racist” and criticized on campus as a peddler of “European cultural arrogance.” This time, the reaction was quite different.
In his overview of the state of American universities, Kagan declared: “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” He accused faculty of lacking “an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” The students responded with a protracted standing ovation.
Warning of democracy’s fragility, Professor Kagan called for schools to adopt “a common core of studies” to convey the history, literature and phil- osophy of western culture to students.
Such “core” texts sometimes are referred to as the Great Books — the Bible (and now the Koran), Aristotle, Shakespeare, the American Constitution in the U.S., Canada’s founding debates here — summarized in Matthew Arnold’s words as “the best which has been thought and said.”
By the happiest of coincidences, I spent last weekend in Ottawa at the 19th annual conference of the Association for Core texts and Courses (ACTC). Sponsored by Carleton University’s College of Humanities, and University of King’s College, its theme was: “Rethinking the Liberal Arts
The conference seemed like a trip back in time to the golden age of the classical-liberal arts
through Core Texts: Science, Poetry, Philosophy and History.”
Here I briefly immersed myself in what Donald Kagan is recommending to all schools. It seemed like a trip back in time to the golden age of the classical-liberal arts, when our intelligentsia was not hostile to its own intellectual tradition.
About 200 scholars and students participated in the conference — several from Canadian institutions, but mostly American. A plethora of concurrent sessions made for triage between such tempting fare as: “Rhetoric and Statecraft: Lessons from Thucydides;” “Liberty and Virtue in the Federalist Papers”; “The Idea of Responsibility in the Brothers Karamazov”; and “Adam Smith on the Thumotic Passions and Virtues.”
My most rewarding choice for columnizing purposes was “A Guide to teaching Core Texts in the Middle East.” The presentations were all stimulating, but more important was the frank discussion that ensued on what is and isn’t a core text.
A University of Dallas professor wants to introduce his graduate students to the medieval scholar Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, but wonders: Is the Guide “too narrowly Jewish?” A Morehead State University professor teaches Suras from the Koran, but “not the [problematic] hadiths.” A core-texts prof in Singapore teaches his Chinese/Malay/ Hindu/Muslim students Sayid Qutb’s
Milestones because, even though Qutb is the “philosopher of Islamic terrorism,” it is historically important.
Discussion became civil debate. The Singapore prof defended Milestones as “absolutist” — but not “extremist” like Mein Kampf. In the end, I agreed with the Dallas prof: Core texts can’t be triumphalist recruitment texts that demonize other groups. They must have “inherent,” “universal” and “permanent” value. Milestones doesn’t meet the core-text standard. Likewise: Marx’s Das Kapital, yes; the
Communist Manifesto, no. As Donald Kagan noted in his farewell speech, good citizens aren’t born; they must be educated. If all young people were attending seminars like these, they would end up as critical thinkers with respect for their own “great wells of democracy” (Martin Luther King), from which they are often actively discouraged in mainstream humanities departments.
Parents, seek out core-text programs, and encourage your children to enroll in them. It will be a win-win for them and for society.