The book is a collection of the talks Harvey Mansfield gave to his colleagues at Harvard on major educational issues from 1974 to 2025. Six articles from the undergraduate newspaper, the Harvard Crimson in 2025 treat the issues in the clash between Harvard and the Trump Administration. This was an unprecedented invitation to a professor, widely read and discussed, covering the idea of an Ivory Tower, affirmative action for conservatives, free speech and protest speech, the origins of woke, science and the humanities, what conservatives offer to education. These are preceded by a talk that contrasts the new and the old Harvard, setting the stage for conflict today. Another item is a reform curriculum for a college with ambition. A study titled "the suicide of meritocracy" brings up the grade inflation everywhere today: everyone wants to choose students by merit, yet no one wants to test and grade it according to merits.
Why do universities say they must keep up with change? Aren't there principles that do not change? Education needs tradition as well as progress. Science is always new; humanities are mostly old. How did Harvey Mansfield choose to address his colleagues? His faculty speeches, laced with humor, show one professor standing up to a whole faculty, not with taunts and insults, but with arguments. The author spent the life of his career defending lost causes, which now, after his retirement, have suddenly become winners--affirmative action and representation for conservatives.
A university seems like a simple thing--students learn the knowledge professors teach. But professors disagree and students react--it's not so simple. Our universities have botched their job. They failed to see the need for the balance of opinion that permits faculty and students to disagree safely and reasonably.. They failed to appreciate the special character of institutions devoted to weighing the values that society takes for granted. The ivory tower sits in its society but rises above it.
These are the topics and issues that teem in the talks of one professor to his university in our time.
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