Current Wisdom

“Most ominously, Americans now question the need – and significantly – the value of a college degree.”—Brian C. Mitchell, on the American Association of University Professors Academe blog.

“It pollutes our discourse with self-congratulation and self-flagellation at the same time.”—Bill McClay of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga…

“Tuition alone cannot sustain higher education, which means that it’s essential to build support among people who don’t listen to NPR and drive hybrids.”— Chris Beneke, associate professor of history at Bentley University, and Randall Stephens is a reader in history at Northumbria University, in England.

“And the country I was born in had no meaningful civil liberty tradition whatsoever: Canada!”— Donald Alexander Downs, Alexander Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on accepting the Bradley Foundation’s Jeane Kirkpatrick prize at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Every radical movement of the Twentieth Century was a triumph of the will over reason.”—Paul Rahe, professor of History, Hillsdale…

“The reason that the institutions of the West are under assault is because they can be.”—Stephen Balch, director, Institute for…

“I think the party was a drag on him more than he was on the party.” New York Times columnist David Brooks on 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney, at Harvard late last year.

“Academia doesn’t train how to do archival research or reward people for doing it.” Hershel Parker, professor of English, emeritus,…

“In neither political party are realists, libertarians and Christians particularly welcome.”—UPenn historian Walter McDougall at the Cato Institute, February 7, 2013.

“A few decades ago, when we realized that girls languished behind boys in math and science, we mounted a concerted…

“There is nothing that arid, overly specialized academicians—who usually attain tenure without ever writing a readable work of interest to…

Heard at the Modern Language Association: “When we teach literature, we teach what we already know, only slightly differently.” Jean Michel Rabate’, University of Pennsylvania