The assault on American excellence

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Title:

The assault on American excellence

Author:

Kronman, Anthony T., author.

ISBN:

9781501199486

Physical Description:

272 pages 24 cm

Subject Term:

Education, Higher -- Aims and objectives -- United States.

Education, Higher -- Political aspects -- United States.

Intellectual freedom -- United States.

Democracy -- United States.

Summary:

"The former dean of Yale Law School surveys the full sweep of recent campus controversies to show how these disputes threaten the best of America's intellectual traditions--including democracy itself. In his tenure at Yale, Anthony Kronman has watched students march across campus to protest the names of buildings and seen colleagues resign over emails about Halloween costumes. He is no stranger to recent confrontations at American universities. But where many see only the suppression of free speech, the babying of students, and the drive to bury the imperfect parts of our history, Kronman recognizes in these on-campus clashes a threat to our democracy. As Kronman argues in The Assault on American Excellence, the founders of our nation learned over three centuries ago that in order for this country to have a robust democratic government, its citizens have to be 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.

In other words, to prepare people to choose good leaders, you need to turn them into smart fighters, people who can take hits and think clearly so they're not manipulated by demagogues. Kronman is the first to tie today's campus debates back to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to show how these modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and optimistic, that of a humanist and a lover of the humanities who is passionate about educating students capable of living up to the demands of a thriving democracy. Incisive and wise, The Assault on American Excellence makes the radical argument that to graduate as good citizens, college students have to be tested in a system that isn't wholly focused on being good to them"--

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	378.73 KRO	Searching... Unknown

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A New York Times Editors' Choice

The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is out of place at institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy.

In his tenure at Yale, Anthony Kronman has watched students march across campus to protest the names of buildings and seen colleagues resign over emails about Halloween costumes. He is no stranger to recent confrontations at American universities. But where many see only the suppression of free speech, the babying of students, and the drive to bury the imperfect parts of our history, Kronman recognizes in these on-campus clashes a threat to our democracy.

As Kronman argues in The Assault on American Excellence , the founders of our nation learned over three centuries ago that in order for this country to have a robust democratic government, its citizens have to be 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. In other words, to prepare people to choose good leaders, you need to turn them into smart fighters, people who can take hits and think clearly so they're not manipulated by demagogues.

Kronman is the first to tie today's campus debates back to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to show how these modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and optimistic, that of a humanist and a lover of the humanities who is passionate about educating students capable of living up to the demands of a thriving democracy.

Incisive and wise, The Assault on American Excellence makes the radical argument that to graduate as good citizens, college students have to be tested in a system that isn't wholly focused on being good to them.

Author Notes

Anthony Kronman is a writer, lawyer, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a former dean of the Yale Law School from 1994-2004. He is the author or coauthor of five books, including The Assault on American Excellence , Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life , and Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan . Professor Kronman taught at the University of Minnesota Law School and the University of Chicago Law School before joining the Yale faculty. Outside of his academic obligations, Kronman served on the board of various non-profit organizations including the Foote School in New Haven, Yale University Press, and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. He is a member of Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation, the Connecticut Bar Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews (2)

Kirkus Review

A defense of academic elitism by a former academic at an elite institution.Former Yale Law School dean and longtime professor Kronman (Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan, 2016, etc.) takes a jaundiced view of the underlying sentiments that have lately manifested in a series of events at that university and others: the abandonment by one college "master" of that term to avoid causing offense to those who might connect it to "the racism and hierarchy of the antebellum South"; the censure of two other masters for supposedly denigrating minority students by not issuing explicit instructions on what costumes students could wear on Halloween; the rise of "trigger warnings"; and so forth. An erstwhile anti-war activist and student radical whose "politics have mellowed since," the author counters that college is necessarily an elite institution, that there is a hierarchy of values and ethics in the pursuit of knowledge and the ancient Greek ideal of excellence, and that democratization taken to extremes can only destroy those "islands of excellence in a democratic sea." Kronman sees the most extreme damage as falling on the humanities, which "sound in an aristocratic register that today one is ashamed to acknowledge, yet alone proclaim." One aspect of that aristocratic register is the distinction in accomplishment and rank between master/professor and student and the Socratic notion that there is a "rank order of human greatness"; another is the thought that tolerance of ambiguity and dissonance is part of the academic experience; still another is that academic institutions are "a community of conversation with a special ethic of its own," not a haven for retreat from uncomfortable thoughts or a safe space against microaggressions. Invoking Arendt, Orwell, de Tocqueville, and others, Kronman delivers a coherent, provocative case for a return to traditional academic valuesthough it's one that is not likely to sway those who adhere to modern/postmodern mores.Certain to cause more arguments than it settles and likely to appeal most to the Allan Bloom/Jacques Barzun wing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Choice Review

Despite its nearly 40 pages of supporting notes, Kronman's book is little more than a personal essay in which he attempts to connect the competing ideals of the "democratic promise of American life" with a belief in the academy as a bastion of "aristocratic" values, which posit that "some ways of living are better than others." Given that the author has spent the last four decades ensconced at Yale University, it is perhaps not so surprising to find him espousing an "ivy tower" vision of "excellence" that can best be preserved by adhering to the traditional tenets of a rigorous liberal education. He disdains efforts at promoting egalitarianism and diversity and "safe spaces" on campuses while failing to take into account the wide range of viable public and private options that exist to meet the needs of students with differing goals. This book would be of value for students of educational philosophy, provided it were coupled with another that takes an opposing view. In that way, a reader could potentially glean the kind of critical thinking that might, indeed, provide the missing connection Kronman seeks. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. --Howard M. Miller, formerly, Mercy College

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