Taking Back the Academy

Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom published a book called The Closing of the American Mind, which made a series of stark arguments about what seemed to be happening in higher education. The left was taking over at elite colleges. After Bloom's lachrymose lamentation, there seemed to be a boom in conservative alarms about the ideological lopsidedness of the academy. Some scholars, such as Dinesh D'Souza, David Horowitz, and, to a certain extent, Victor Davis Hanson, rose to national attention on the issue of liberal academic malfeasance. Since American universities also train and credential K-12 teachers, not to mention journalists and most media professionals, there was a foreseeable death spiral for conservative thought. Liberalism was destined to attain a frightening monopoly over the culture. Now that we're 25 years after Bloom, what has been the result? Conservatives get a big fat F In part because conservatives focused too much on controversies at elite...(Read Full Article)

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