I've had a few people write privately in response to my weekend posts mentioning my undergraduate school, St. John's College, and its unusual Great Books Program. One writer was particularly vehement: "That place is a nest of racists and neocon fascists."
The racism charge is deeply wrongheaded (among other things, the student body has been integrated and co-ed since at least the mid 60s, despite its 'impractical' curriculum and limited financial means). But the putative neocon connection is an interesting, and perhaps relevant, question. And since some of the people involved with St. John's have ties to current events and people -- including, indirectly, our own Dan Darling-- I thought I'd explore that a little here. Who knows? Perhaps along the way I'll figure out whether I'm a neocon myself ... if I can figure out what that means, anyway.
It's January 1969 ... the bitter presidential election is over, but conflict continues to rage in Vietnam and on the streets of America. At 8 pm on a Monday evening, twenty freshmen climb the worn stairs to the second story of an old building and take chairs around a large wooden table. At each end of the table sits a tutor, as the faculty are called ... but they all in the room are students, some senior, some more junior. The real teacher that night is the poet, long dead, who composed the book they each carry - a thick account of another long, bloody war that set brother against brother while mothers wept over the bodies of their dead children.One of the tutors opens to the beginning passage and reads:
"Sing, Goddess, of the wrath of Achilles son of Pelaeus
And the countless ills he brought on his fellow Achaeans,
Many brave souls sent down to Hades beforetime,
Heroes lying dead, food for dogs and crows."After a moment, the tutor looks up and asks:
"Is Homer anti-war?"
Mortimer J. (Jerome) Adler was born in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry salesman. He dropped out of school at 14 years of age and went to work as a secretary and copy boy at the New York Sun, hoping to become a journalist. After a year, he took night classes at Columbia University to improve his writing.It was there that he became interested, after reading the autobiography of the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in the great philosophers and thinkers of Western civilization. Adler was driven to continue his reading after learning that Mill had read Plato when he was only five years old, while he had not read him at all. A book by Plato was lent to him by a neighbor and Adler became hooked. He then decided to study philosophy at Columbia University, where he received a scholarship. But he was so focused on philosophy that he failed to complete the requisite physical education course to earn his bachelor's degree.
Nevertheless, his command of the classics became so great that Columbia University awarded him a doctorate in philosophy a few years after he began teaching there.
Adler wanted to bring the great works of the Western tradition to anyone interested. So in addition to his scholarly books, he helped to found two influential institutes (including the Aspen Institute), wrote several books on reforming education and in 1952 convinced Britannica to publish a Great Books of the Western World series, which they sold alongside their encyclopedias.
Many of Adler's colleagues and friends on the advisory board for that series would also make good starting places for understanding St. John's and the new Program there. Consider Robert Maynard Hutchins, who became editor in chief of the series. Named president of Chicago University (where Adler taught and stirred up controversy by pushing the faculty for radical reform of the curriculum) at age 30, Hutchins was famous and infamous during his time in higher education:Robert Maynard Hutchins (b. Jan. 17, 1899, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.--d. May 17, 1977, Santa Barbara, Calif.), American educator and university and foundation president, who criticized over-specialization and sought to balance the college curriculum and to maintain the Western intellectual tradition.
After attending Oberlin College ... he served in the ambulance service of the U.S. and Italian armies during World War I ... graduated from Yale University (A.B., 1921) and Yale Law School (LL.B., 1925), where he was named dean in 1927. Two years later, at the age of 30, he became president of the University of Chicago; he remained at Chicago until 1951 ... A controversial administrator, ... [h]is Chicago Plan for undergraduates encouraged liberal education at earlier ages and measured achievement by comprehensive examination, rather than by classroom time served. He introduced study of the Great Books ...
Hutchins was active in forming the Committee to Frame a World Constitution (1945), led the Commission on Freedom of the Press (1946), and vigorously defended academic freedom, opposing faculty loyalty oaths in the 1950s. After serving as associate director of the Ford Foundation (from 1951), he became president of the Fund for the Republic (1954) and in 1959 founded the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (Santa Barbara, Calif.) as the fund's main activity. The Center was an attempt to approach Hutchins' ideal of "a community of scholars" discussing a wide range of issues--individual freedom, international order, ecological imperatives, the rights of minorities and of women, and the nature of the good life, among others.
The story is told that Hutchins, who abolished intercollegiate football at Chicago, was once asked by a sports fan alumnus, "Don't you ever get the urge to exercise?" He replied, "Yes ... but I lie down until it passes."
Excellent beginning. I've long been a great fan of
Adler and the Great Books program. I'm not proud that I adhere to Hutchins on exercise.
Robin:
Perhaps along the way I'll figure out whether I'm a neo-con myself ... if I can figure out what that means, anyway.
Perhaps this will help and good luck in finding where you fit in the political structure.
neoconservative(United_States)
This is interesting. Keep going.
Robin:
Mark Novak sez:
"Then, too, the Left has developed a tic about neoconservatives. These former leftists (for a former leftist is what a neoconservative is, of the first generation anyway) do have a vision of the future, a bright vision to rival that of the Left. They fight the Left, ideology for ideology, policy proposal for policy proposal, class analysis for class analysis. The neoconservatives side with the conservatives on most issues, but with an attitude, and an aim, and a determination. They are, in the life of the intellect, warriors. Their sharpest weapon is the reality check. That is their comparative advantage over the Left. They have been “mugged by” and won over to reality."
Based on that definition, I think we are all neocons, on this bus! :)
Wish my parents had the forsight to send me to St. John's. It would've saved me a lot of heartache. By the 1980s, though, I had read nearly everything Adler had written. Around that time, being really really short of cash, I made a deal with Michael Powell, founder of Powell's Books in Portland, to pay him $20/wk until I paid off a used set of the Great Books. So that someone else wouldn't snag the set I had chosen he hid them in a secret recess under one of the shelves. (He always wore a baseball cap and short-sleeved shirt in the store, so had the informal quality that Michael Moore aspires to, without the pretense.) I remember how excited I was when I finally paid off that set and went to pick it up, and how tickled he was to get them for me.
Some years later some fool who was helping me move allowed the box containing the set to fall off the back of their truck, and didn't even bother to stop to pick it up. By the time we returned the box had been rifled. I thanked them for the "help," but that was the last thing I said to them. Such friends, one doesn't need.
But I still have my original copy of How to Think About War and Peace published in 1944, though the 0% rag content high-acid pulp paper is brown and brittle now. I vainly recommend this book whenever someone suggests the UN as the solution to war or anti-totalitarianism, or talks loftily about "international law," as though it's not an oxymoron. (There used to be a PDF version of the book on the internet, but it seems to have been taken off. Perhaps a copyright issue.)
By the way, I also had the immense good fortune to become one of Marty Lipset's students, and his R.A. for a number of years. But perhaps, now that you mention it, the journey started with Adler.
Thanks for the tonic, Robin. With any luck St. John's will one day be the catalyst for an effective reform of the train wreck we laughingly call "higher education."
Any truth to the rumor that Adler was the role model for the thesis professor whom the author harshly critiques in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert Pirsig?).
I thought about applying to St. John's, but figured it would make me unemployable except in professions found in the game Dungeons and Dragons (bard, thief, monk, cleric, wizard, etc.)
Of course, this was before I realized that any liberal arts degree means this.
:-)
Not sure of the Persig story. I was underwhelmed by Zen & the Art ... when it came out and continue to be so today, fwiw.
For years my mother-in-law fretted that neither Roger nor I had "a saleable skill" as a result of our St. John's degrees. And it's true that the school views the undergraduate years as a time for education, rather than vocational training.
Somehow we've managed to find our way LOL ... maybe because of the 4 grad degrees between us so far and a 5th under way, maybe just luck in timing.
One suggestion about that liberal arts degree. though. When I was hiring people in business, the ability to communicate well, to understand end users (for techie companies) etc. was a big plus. If you're willing to do boring corporate stuff, there are jobs to be had out there ... although it helps if you have some idea what area or industry you'd really like to be in, and focus applying to those companies ...
Scott -- No PDF file, but I did locate the Mortimer Adler Archive on-line:
http://radicalacademy.com/adlerdirectory.htm
-- which includes his War & Peace essay.
My wife is a Johnny alum, and I like to think of myself as one in spirit. I find it amusing that anyone would try to ideologically cubbyhole them, much less as racists and/or fascists. But then there are many these days to whom the substance of anything is far less important than how it can be labelled.
If anyone is interested, I've posted the 2nd installment of this series.
Umbriel:
I really ought to have downloaded it when it was available. It was an exact rendition of the 1944 edition, but for some reason I just figured it'd always be there and now it's gone. Here's a paperback version available from Amazon, that looks to be a reprint of the 1944 edition I have. The nice thing about the PDF version was that you could electronically search it, though.
Umbriel,
Funny you should mention communication as the value of a liberal arts degree. I have a degree in History from Notre Dame, and have spent much of my career as a computer trainer and software product evangelist.
Someone actually said of St. John's, "That place is a nest of racists and neocon fascists?"
Wow. I went to the little school on the other side of King George Street and we always figured SJC was the leftiest place this side of Berkeley. And this was well after the Vietnam era, in the mid-90s.
I'm sure neither view is exactly right, but they can't both be.
Yup, someone actually wrote that. Don't know who the writer is, but the Larouche cultists are firmly convinced that Strauss taught Klein the secret world-wide Jewish neocon conspiracy handshake and that it gets passed on to select students there.
[comment deleted here, but you can guess ....]
Re: right vs left wing, some (but not many) Johnnies every year will be socially conservative, a few will be deeply and traditionally religious, most will look like street people. And very very few Johnnies are into external conformity (heh).
But what they all generally share is an absolute abhorance of cant and fuzzy thinking - including the kind that permeates the Left. Johnnies mastered the art of Fisking long before there was a blogosphere LOL.
BTW, during Vietnam, Johnnies would seranade the Mids on parade with "I wanna be an Airborne Ranger, I wanna go to Vietnam", and the Middies would sing back "I wanna be a hippy weirdo, I wanna go to St. John's" ... but we also had several joint school seminars each year, not to mention the famous Croquet Match.
And of course, my husband and I are both grads and both ended up (years later) teaching at West Point.