The Assault on American Excellence PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Assault on American Excellence PDF full book. Access full book title The Assault on American Excellence by Anthony T. Kronman. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Anthony T. Kronman
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 1501199498
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Get Book Here
Book Description
“I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy. College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing—over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students—has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem. “Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues. Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society—and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.
Author: Anthony T. Kronman
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 1501199498
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Get Book Here
Book Description
“I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy. College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing—over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students—has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem. “Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues. Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society—and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.
Author: Anthony T. Kronman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300138164
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book describes the ever-escalating dangers to which Jewish refugees and recent immigrants were subjected in France and Italy as the Holocaust marched forward. Susan Zuccotti uncovers a gruelling yet complex history of suffering and resilience through historical documents and personal testimonies from members of nine central and eastern European Jewish families, displaced to France in the opening years of the Second World War. The chronicle of their lives reveals clearly that these Jewish families experienced persecution of far greater intensity than citizen Jews or longtime resident immigrants. The odyssey of the nine families took them from hostile Vichy France to the Alpine village of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and on to Italy, where German soldiers rather than hoped-for Allied troops awaited. Those who crossed over to Italy were either deported to Auschwitz or forced to scatter in desperate flight. Zuccotti brings to light the agonies of the refugees' unstable lives, the evolution of French policies toward Jews, the reasons behind the flight from the relative idyll of Saint-Martin-Vesubie, and the choices that confronted those who arrived in Italy. Powerful archival evidence frames this history, while firsthand reports underscore the human cost of the nightmarish years of persecution.
Author: Michael S. Roth
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300248725
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 165
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto on the crises confronting higher education In this bracing book, Michael S. Roth stakes out a pragmatist path through the thicket of issues facing colleges today to carry out the mission of higher education. With great empathy, candor, subtlety, and insight, Roth offers a sane approach to the noisy debates surrounding affirmative action, political correctness, and free speech, urging us to envision college as a space in which students are empowered to engage with criticism and with a variety of ideas. Countering the increasing cynical dismissal—from both liberals and conservatives—of the traditional core values of higher education, this book champions the merits of different diversities, including intellectual diversity, with a timely call for universities to embrace boldness, rigor, and practical idealism.
Author: Anthony T. Kronman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224915
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1174
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this passionate and searching book, Anthony Kronman offers a third way—beyond atheism and religion—to the God of the modern world We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed “atheists” continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the “eternal and divine.” For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief—the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought—from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud—Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today.
Author: Allan Bloom
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Get Book Here
Book Description
The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.
Author: Harry Lewis
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1586485016
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Harvard professor and former Dean of Harvard College offers his provocative analysis of how America's great universities are failing students and the nation
Author: Shane Bauer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735223580
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Get Book Here
Book Description
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.
Author: Martin D. Schwartz
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1506319009
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Get Book Here
Book Description
"I can′t imagine anyone living or working with adolescents and young adults without being aware of the material in this book. A must read for educators, health providers, student personnel, administrators, the clergy, campus security, and even parents." --Mary P. Koss, The Arizona Prevention Center, University of Arizona "My overall response to this book is highly positive. I think the authors make an important contribution to the field of violence against women by focusing on male peer support for sexual violence. I think that this book fills a real void in the literature. Sanday′s book, Fraternity Gang Rape, offers a rich theoretical analysis of rape on campus, and this book takes us another step in understanding sexual violence on campus by focusing on a variety of other issues related to campus rape such as alcohol and sports. . . . I think this book could (and should) be recommended reading for every college student in the U.S. and Canada. . . . The arguments . . . are clearly stated and they provide a powerful analysis of this serious problem--the material is fascinating and easy to read." --Raquel Kennedy Bergen, Sociology Department, St. Joseph′s University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania "This book speaks to me on several different levels. . . . The loose pages of the manuscript that I have are now well marked with red ink; some are tea-stained and others are dog-eared. From my experience as a teacher, researcher, editor, and activist, this is usually the sign of a very good book--good not because it makes an interesting read but, more important, because it is useful. . . . As a researcher, I was struck by the book′s utility in . . . the authors′ attention to methodology . . . [and the book′s] contribution to theory building. . . . As an educator, I am impressed by the accessibility of the analysis, which makes the book useful as a text in many different courses. It is an interesting read; in fact, I predict that most students will report that they liked reading it. At the same time, however, it contains a wealth of information that carries not only the credibility stamp of science but also speaks directly to the students′ experience. . . . This book is also a valuable resource for faculty and administrators willing to scrutinize their personal attitudes and behavior as well as the policies and practices of their institutions. . . . One more level on which this book spoke to me [is] a more personal level. . . . We must make a commitment to what the authors call ′′newsmaking′′: reaching out beyond our own circles to get alternative messages heard by as many people as possible. . . . And therein lies, I suppose, the book′s ultimate value: what we have here is a testament to the fact that the personal is political. That old feminist adage has been quoted so often and is on so many bumper stickers that the words sound hollow much of the time. I want to take this opportunity to thank Martin D. Schwartz and Walter S. DeKeseredy for reinvigorating it--and me." --from the Foreword by Claire M. Renzetti, St. Joseph′s University, Philadelphia For many coeds, the college campus life experience is marred by traumatic experiences of sexual assault. While there are many social determinants of rape and attempted rape, Sexual Assault on the College Campus examines the pivotal role of male peer support in legitimizing woman abuse. Written in an approachable style and completely grounded in the scientific research literature, this book provides enlightening discussions on the relationship of sexual assault to factors such as alcohol, deterrence, and fraternities. Authors Martin D. Schwartz and Walter S. DeKeseredy advance an original theory on male peer support and its role in supporting sexual assault using extensive prior studies and investigations they′ve conducted, including a national representative study and local campus victimization surveys. Combining a firm political stand with important research findings in a highly readable format, Sexual Assault on the College Campus provides essential reading for academics, researchers, criminologists, social workers, mental health professionals, and college administrators. It will also educate students in courses that wish to make the connection between their college environment and sociology, criminology, criminal justice, women′s studies, psychology, family studies, and counseling.
Author: John M. Ellis
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641772158
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Get Book Here
Book Description
A series of near-riots on campuses aimed at silencing guest speakers has exposed the fact that our universities are no longer devoted to the free exchange of ideas in pursuit of truth. But this hostility to free speech is only a symptom of a deeper problem, writes John Ellis. Having watched the deterioration of academia up close for the past fifty years, Ellis locates the core of the problem in a change in the composition of the faculty during this time, from mildly left-leaning to almost exclusively leftist. He explains how astonishing historical luck led to the success of a plan first devised by a small group of activists to use college campuses to promote radical politics, and why laws and regulations designed to prevent the politicizing of higher education proved insufficient. Ellis shows that political motivation is always destructive of higher learning. Even science and technology departments are not immune. The corruption of universities by radical politics also does wider damage: to primary and secondary education, to race relations, to preparation for the workplace, and to the political and social fabric of the nation. Commonly suggested remedies—new free-speech rules, or enforced right-of-center appointments—will fail because they don’t touch the core problem, a controlling faculty majority of political activists with no real interest in scholarship. This book proposes more drastic and effective reform measures. The first step is for Americans to recognize that vast sums of public money intended for education are being diverted to a political agenda, and to demand that this fraud be stopped.
Author: Nathan D. Grawe
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440245
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
Following Grawe's seminal first book, this volume answers the question: How can a college or university prepare for forecasted demographic disruptions? Demographic changes promise to reshape the market for higher education in the next 15 years. Colleges are already grappling with the consequences of declining family size due to low birth rates brought on by the Great Recession, as well as the continuing shift toward minority student populations. Each institution faces a distinct market context with unique organizational strengths; no one-size-fits-all answer could suffice. In this essential follow-up to Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Nathan D. Grawe explores how proactive institutions are preparing for the resulting challenges that lie ahead. While it isn't possible to reverse the demographic tide, most institutions, he argues persuasively, can mitigate the effects. Drawing on interviews with higher education leaders, Grawe explores successful avenues of response, including • recruitment initiatives • retention programs • revisions to the academic and cocurricular program • institutional growth plans • retrenchment efforts • collaborative action Throughout, Grawe presents readers with examples taken from a range of institutions—small and large, public and private, two-year and four-year, selective and open-access. While an effective response to demographic change must reflect the individual campus context, the cases Grawe analyzes will prompt conversations about the best paths forward. The Agile College also extends projections for higher education demand. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study, the book updates prior work by incorporating new information on college-going after the Great Recession and pushes forecasts into the mid-2030s. What's more, the analysis expands to examine additional aspects of the higher education market, such as dual enrollment, transfer students, and the role of immigration in college demand.
