Why the Great Books matter: Machiavelli edition
Jennifer Frey v Chris Rufo
My friend Dan McCarthy at ISI did a long interview with Jennifer Frey, the recently fired Director of the Honors College at University of Tulsa. I wrote about the scandal the other day—the university persuaded Frey to quit her tenured job, to move her family to Oklahoma, & to build a liberal arts program there. She succeeded, it’s doing very well, it seems, both in terms of funding & students, yet the administration decided to fire her & strangle the program after only two years.
Philosophy Dies Twice in Tulsa
There is, believe it or not, a University of Tulsa. I’ve never been there, but I did heard of it once, in the previous decade. It came to mind again today, because intellectual celebrity & professor of philosophy Jennifer Frey just announced that TU will destroy her Honors College there, two years after they got her to move her family to Oklahoma, teach…
I’m not from Oklahoma, so it’s their problem, not mine. The university has been getting a horrible reputation on X My problem is liberal arts education. Listen to Dan’s questions here & Frey’s answers.
Meanwhile my friend Chris Rufo has been less than sympathetic to Frey. I believe his basic point is right, to defend the liberal arts you now need to learn enough politics & be sufficiently active to defend yourself against these kinds of crazy attacks. Again, University of Tulsa had burned down a department of philosophy in 2019, so this was not unprecedented or dimly remembered. Read Chris’s thread here.
Now, at the end of the interview, Frey talks about Machiavelli, who is also Chris’s muse. Chris has been involved in saving New College in Florida, a liberal arts school, so his achievements are not out of comparisons with Frey’s. Yet, as Chris points out, Frey has been remarkably contemptuous of those of us who are trying to act politically to save liberal education. But now she suggests, events have refuted her. I’m curious to see what she learns from her success & failure as a founder—major theme in political philosophy!
Perhaps there’s some way for those of us who take liberal education seriously to act together; perhaps there’s a way to connect the politics & the philosophy in political philosophy.
I didn't know the Frey had pitted herself against Rufo.
Forgive me for being so one-track, but is there is an excess on the other end of things as well. Rufo is, after all, one among the many conservative sophisticates with a platform who has done zip, zilch, nada, nothing to end the conservative side of the Suppression of the extensive Covid-vax harms and related system-ic crimes. He has the excuse (limited, and arguably expired) of existing duties to his important causes and programs, but most other conservatives do not have even this.
And yes, the participation in this Suppression, while it seems to be tactical prudence, politeness, and wise acceptance--in some arenas--of the way things are, ultimately is a kind of mendacity, that requires one's own participation, so that the toll it cumulatively takes on one's soul cannot but become a real one. So beware this oh-so knowing "use" of Machiavelli and Nietzsche for the sake of conservative ends! Especially at this moment. Beware of what you think it justifies. Beware of how, while it promises to give you the allure of hidden depths, it usually makes one like all the rest: disgustingly flexible. The young men and women pant in the desert, and finally come to the oasis of the sages, and what do they find? Largely-dry fountains shaped like tight-lipped Sphinxes, which only dribble out enough water for merest survival.
Rufo has said that "For me, the future of conservatism carries life-and-death ramifications for America as a whole." And I say "Amen," but also this: "Beware, for souls shrivel."