![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Having largely disappeared from the humanities and social sciences, conservatives have become the Other in progressive discussions of higher education. Crucial to this othering is the ascription of personal faults, such as racism or a lack of interest in marginal student populations. This article presents an alternative view of academic conservative writers on higher education. Rather than focus on their policy recommendations, it focuses on their perceptions of contemporary higher education, and finds that academic conservatives (as distinct from many conservative politicians) argue for the same goals as their progressive counterparts: a strong program of liberal arts, critical thinking, and access to education for diverse student populations. It divides these writers into two broad categories for analysis: traditional conservatives and libertarians. Suggestions are provided for readers who wish to explore these ideas more fully.
Notes
1 C.W. Barrow, “The Rationality Crisis in US Higher Education,” New Political Science 32:3 (2010), pp. 317–344.
2 Benjamin Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why it Matters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011).
3 The best recent survey on the American conservatives is George Nash, Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009). For a good history of the Conservative Movement, see: John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).
4 John Newman, The Idea of a University (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1987 [1873]). Prominent contemporary journals in this tradition include First Things (more political and academic) and Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity (more theological and aimed at a wider readership).
5 Donald Kagan, “Ave Atque Vale,” The New Criterion 31:1 (2013), pp. 4–12, < http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Ave-atque-vale-7653>. Kagan is best known for writing the standard modern account of the Peloponnesian War, but those interested in his take on higher education should read his 2005 Jefferson Lecture for a defense of studying history for its intrinsic value, not just as a canvas on which to write modern values.
6 Carol Iannone, “Our Western Heritage: An interview with Robert George,” Academic Questions 25:1 (2012), pp. 37–45. Academic Questions is a higher education-focused journal of the National Association of Scholars, the second largest academic conservative association.
7 Patrick J. Deneen, “Science and the Decline of the Liberal Arts,” The New Atlantis 26 (Fall 2009/Winter 2010), pp. 60–68. This emphasis on self-mastery rather than self-fulfillment is common to religious conservatives like George and Deneen (both outspoken Catholics).
8 This rhetoric is common in the New Testament, particularly in Paul's letters, but it appears prominently in Islamic writings like Qutb's In the Shade of the Qur'an as well.
9 Alan Kors, “The Sadness of Higher Education,” New Criterion 26:9 (2009), pp. 9–14.
10 Kristen Buras, Rightist Multiculturalism: Lessons in Neoconservative School Reform (New York: Routledge Press, 2010), p. 43.
11 Cary Nelson, No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom (New York: University Press, 2010).
12 Peter Wood and Michael Toscano, “What Does Bowdoin Teach? How A Contemporary Liberal Arts College Shapes Students” (2013), < http://www.nas.org/projects/the_bowdoin_project>.
13 Richard Fonte, Peter Wood, and Ashley, “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?” (2013), < http://www.nas.org/articles/recasting_history_are_race_class_and_gender_dominating_american_history>, pp. 7–8.
14 Hanson is currently a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, as is Robert George (cited earlier) and many prominent conservative academics. The institute provides a platform for them to speak on policy issues.
15 Victor Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (New York: Free Press. 1998). Many of his recent writings are partisan polemics, but Hanson's The Other Greeks (1999), University of California Press, Berkeley remains a compelling historical argument that the democratic values of equality and participation originated with redneck farmers in Classical Greece, not urban sophisticates.
16 Kagan, “Ave Atque Vale.”
17 Kors, “The Sadness of Higher Education.”
18 For recent examples of this, see: Ron Brownstein, “Are College Degrees Inherited?” National Journal Magazine, April 12, 2014; Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
19 George Leef, “The Overselling of Higher Education,” Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Paper (2006).
20 Andrew Ferguson, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting his Kid into College (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 38.
21 David Labaree, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).
22 Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa Academia Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
23 Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
24 Charles Blaich, “Overview of findings from the First Year of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education” (Wabash College, Center for Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, 2007), < http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-research/>.
25 Intercollegiate Studies Institute, “Enlightened Citizenship” (American Civic Literacy Institute, 2011), < http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/downloads.aspx>.
26 Craig Brandon, The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2011).
27 Glen Reynolds, The Higher Education Bubble (New York: Encounter Books, 2013), p. 36.
28 Kenneth Gray and Edwin Herr, Other Ways to Win: Creating Alternatives for High School Graduates (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000), p. 40.
29 Anya Kamenetz, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000).
30 Gray and Herr, Other Ways to Win.
31 Wood and Tascone, Recasting History, p. 371. In my experience, serving on general education committees, this centrifugal pressure may be the result of disciplinary isolation more than pedagogical purpose. Nevertheless, within the University of North Carolina (UNC) system (in which I work) there is little evidence of faculty interest in stronger core requirements (Jay Schalin and Jenna Ashely Robinson, “General Education at UNC-Chapel Hill,” Pope Center Report, 2013).
32 Labaree, How to Succeed in School.
33 Ferguson, Crazy U.
34 Hanson and Heath, Who Killed Homer?, p. 161.
35 Tony Esolen, “The Subhumanities: The Reductive Violence of Race, Class, and Gender Theory,” Intercollegiate Review (Fall 2013).
36 Victor Hanson, “Our Psychodramatic Campuses” (2014), < http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/our-psychodramatic-campuses/>.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
George Ehrhardt
George Ehrhardt is an associate professor of government at Appalachian State University, specializing in Asian politics and research methodology, as well as being active in the conservative movement.