As we consider the future of higher education, the best way to decide what universities should be is not to gaze into the future but to study the past. Marsden’s narrative, The Soul of the American University Revisited, raises a signpost for our society.https://t.co/biny97DzZfpic.twitter.com/zlIfF07rEe
“Why among the many institutions of Catholic learning are there so few dedicated to a liberating and humane education in truth, humility, and love?” John C. Pinheiro evaluates the widespread decline of Catholic universities and colleges for @ubookman: https://t.co/MzoHtHhs6k
"The 'education bubble,' like any asset bubble, is not merely a financial crisis. It is a moral crisis: a misallocation and distortion of value. The underlying problem of the modern university is a crisis of integrity and purpose."
The founders’ Americanism is most identifiably expressed in the
leading political documents of the founding era: the Declaration of
Independence, which Thomas Jefferson said was an “expression of the
American mind,” and in the revolutionary state constitutions as well as
the federal Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The classical
liberalism of the founding era assumed that individual rights to life,
liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are grounded in nature
and that government’s primary responsibility is to protect those rights.
This meant that government must be impartial in adjudicating rival
conceptions of the good life. That is not to say, however, that the
founders’ liberal order was not grounded on a robust moral foundation—it
was.
The practical implementation of these principles created the freest
and wealthiest nation in human history. It also created the most moral
nation known to man. The founders’ frontier republicanism created a
nation of self-owning, self-governing, self-starting, and self-reliant
men and women who lived by a rigorous moral code defined by certain
uniquely American virtues: rationality, independence, initiative,
industriousness, frugality, enterprise, creativity, adventurousness,
courage, optimism. America’s liberal order was forged when the ideas of
Thomas Jefferson passed through the Cumberland Gap and were put into
practice by men like Daniel Boone and women like Annie Oakley.
This is precisely why hundreds of millions of immigrants—myself
included—have come to this place for over 245 years. This is not flowery
or filio-pietistic rhetoric. These are easily demonstrable facts. Those
facts have sometimes been messy and ugly, but on the whole the rise of
the United States of America may be the world’s greatest story of human
achievement. There was a time, of course, when most Americans
(especially conservatives and libertarians) agreed with this assessment.
Sadly, that is no longer true.
Another nuAmerican lecturing Americans about what America is. No thanks.
We published this because it represents a lot of academic/intellectual murmurings these days about folks like @SohrabAhmari & @PatrickDeneen (neither are Nietzscheans) & recent discussions at our own @theammind. Let’s have it out in the open, shall we?https://t.co/hmjabau9Dh
Representing Aristotelianism, Thomism, and Phenomenology (Edith Stein).
Part of the problem is due to the format -- less than 40 minutes, divided up among 3 speakers of 3 different traditions, meant to complement each other and provide the foundation for the next speaker. Instead, we end up with no single account that is developed satisfactorily.
I didn't bother to take notes. Off the top of my head:
1. The Aristotelian presentation focused on the mean and that it is relative to us. A good point but she didn't go any further because of time constraints.
2. Re: the Thomistic presentation. He jumped to a metaphysical account of sex differences, without looking at the physical or biological account execept superficially, was a mistake.
3. (2) Reminds me that the Aristotelian categories of being needs to be reconsidered in light of everything that has been discovered since then about natural substances of all degrees of complexity.
4. The account of the relation of soul to body as form to matter is wrong. While the proposition that biological sex is rooted in matter (taken from Aquinas), this does not mean that sex is not related to form. It depends on how one understands the relation of matter to form, and I have to say again that natural philosophy, physike, has been neglected by Catholic academic philosophers for too long.
5. The Phenomenological presentation: Virtues are the same for men and women but they are colored for men and women (or perceived? to be different). But why resort to univocal naming when analogous naming is possible? As for a sort of unitary quality, manliness or womanliness, well I would prefer to use those words to talk about subrational or corational differences.
His post includes a letter from one of his friends, who is a college professor, who includes this bit:
There will be lots of other impacts but one “positive” one may be this: an acceleration of folks with PhDs teaching in (usually private) secondary ed. In some specialties this was already the trend, but many folks coming off of PhD programs in the humanities may just decide the job market is so beyond prohibitive that they move straight into teaching in high schools, where they may find they enjoy the experience more anyways. If you’re looking to start a classical school with really top-notch humanities talent, there has never been a better time.
CWR: The high-priced spread, revisited by George Weigel
Catholic parents serious about real education and real formation have options other than Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, and other schools assumed to be essential ticket-punches on the path to success in 21st-century America.
One of those options, the University of Dallas, just made an outstanding choice for its new president, selecting Dr. Thomas Hibbs, a first-class thinker who is also a committed Catholic, an able administrator, and a leader. Tom Hibbs joins a gallery of other Catholic college and university presidents — among others, John Garvey at the Catholic University of America, Michael McLean at Thomas Aquinas College, Stephen Minnis at Benedictine College, Timothy O’Donnell at Christendom College, Msgr. James Shea at the University of Mary, and James Towey at Ave Maria University — who are leading a renaissance in Catholic higher education. Their schools, and others, seek to prepare students for any post-undergraduate endeavor by giving them a firm grounding in the liberal arts, Catholic faith, the experience of Catholic community and public service. And they succeed.
The days of American higher education are numbered, and while some Catholic may provide an orthodox environment and the rudiments of a liberal education, they are unprepared to deal with the reality of collapse, statism and feminism. Catholic parents would do better to reconsider what they need to raise their children well and prepare them for the future (something beyond the Benedict Option) and choose accordingly, rather than assume the American way of life will continue forever.
AmConMag: Berkeley Is Collapsing in on Itself by Sean Kennedy
Financial and social costs that began 50 years ago are devouring this iconic university system.
Crazy clericalism at Houston’s University of St. Thomas by Dr. Randall B. Smith
Some clerics in leadership at Catholic universities give lip service to “empowering the laity”—when their real agenda is enforcing their own ideology.
