In response to rising concerns among Mormons (officially, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) about their key educational institution, Brigham Young University, falling to leftist capture, PostModernConservative’s longtime good friend Ralph Hancock, translator of books by Manent and Bénéton, author of fine books on Calvin’s Politics and on Tocqueville/Strauss/Heidegger/et. al (in The Responsibility of Reason), recently gave a dynamite interview:
The interviewer has since broken up the video into sections, and called the first one BYU and the Hard Slide to the Left, but I think our more egg-heady readers will want to check out much of the entire thing, as the summary of contents has headings like these: “—Tocqueville, The American Revolution vs the French Revolution and the '60s. —Classical Liberalism cannot stand on its own. —Politics and religion cannot be kept separate. —The dance of Revelation and Reason and the development of the Enlightenment and America —Continental Philosophy vs the birth of America, and Heidegger vs Strauss.”
But the main meal concerns academia and its leftist slide, and what Hancock says at 20:24-24:50 about that is just so crucial. BYU admin and church leaders make “many fine speeches” about an education that fits (and dialogues) with their religious teachings, that seeks to integrate scientific knowledge with the big questions of life, but these loftily-stated commitments “connect in no way with the incentives on the ground,” that is, the hiring incentives that continue to drive BYU’s actual development.
Hancock is seeking to defend a vision of higher-ed that is “wholistic” and resistant to “hyper-specialization,” a vision put forward by BYU leaders back in the 70s and 80s, as the interviewer and Hancock together lay out at 5:00-13:10. And obviously, the vision also looks to an education in harmony with traditional Mormon doctrine. But putting aside the specifically Mormon needs, most of what Hancock says applies to every religious college, and what is more, even to every secular institution of higher-ed simply seeking to defend real liberal education, or just to maintain minimal viewpoint diversity.
I don’t know that anyone has said this better. Hancock shows how the march into hyper-specialization deliberately discriminates, I would say structurally discriminates against holistic, Great Books educators like yours truly, and usually does so even in putatively “religious” or “traditional” institutions. And he shows, a bit, of how that breeds a weakness before the bullying sorts of leftist/woke academics and administrators, who then gradually gather up all the institutional power.
Don’t miss this! A big part of the sorry story of our nation over the last thirty years (and of the Story of My Life too, at least the career-side of it), is right here.
Yep, Ralph at his most incisive, firm, and unflinching, while speaking in quite moderate tones and acknowledging just how difficult a mission’s like BYU’s (and comparable religious universities) is to even articulate much less pursue.
“'The fortress…may be built of stone (as…Hadrian’s Wall), of men (as in Sparta), or of virtue (as in Victorian England)—to work for very long anywhere it requires all three…[The fortress] provides shelter and room for the flora and fauna of civilization to flourish in all their variety. -But let the flora once begin to undermine the walls of the fortress, and all will be lost…Once the walls come down, the first to go will be those who live as if wishing could make it so' Unquote "