The Ivory Tower

Here & There in the College World

A year or so ago I wrote in this column that financial appeals by private colleges, if they are to be wholly convincing, will have to based on something more than alumni loyalty to the abstract cause of higher education. The majority of the nation’s colleges were not designed to be and have not in the past been administered as lacunae of what Russell Kirk would call defecated intellectuality. They have been intellectual communities first; but also social and traditionalist communities, through which intelligent and responsible members of the elite have passed on common cultural experience to new generations. Discussing Princeton as a case in point, I concluded that “alumni are entitled to ask— and to arrive at an understanding on the matter before they decide on the extent of their support—that their sons, other things being more or less equal, be acknowledged by Princeton as favorite sons.”