Balaam’s Ass in the Seminary

Demonstrations, teach-ins, and similar recent antics on the campus have been called “the revolt of the graduate student.” To assume that all students in graduate and professional schools are gentlemen of the Left would be a sad error, nevertheless. No small part in the graduate-students’ protest against present academic dominations and powers come from strong-willed and intelligent students who are disgusted with the ritualistic Liberalism, dullness and muddy sentimentality of many administrators and professors.

One able champion of religious orthodoxy and political conservatism is Dr. Robert L. Cleath, a student in San Francisco Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) until he graduated as a bachelor of divinity at the end of May. At San Francisco Theological, Dr. Cleath (a doctor of philosophy and a college instructor before he began to study for the ministry) stirred up a considerable fuss, noticed in California newspapers, by presuming to differ with the avant garde moral and theological doctrines enunciated by Dr. Theodore Gill (president of SFT) and the dominant clique in the faculty.

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Russell Kirk

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Demonstrations, teach-ins, and similar recent antics on the campus have been called “the revolt of the graduate student.” To assume that all students in graduate and professional schools are gentlemen of the Left would be a sad error, nevertheless. No small part in the graduate-students’ protest against present academic dominations and powers come from strong-willed and intelligent students who are disgusted with the ritualistic Liberalism, dullness and muddy sentimentality of many administrators and professors.

One able champion of religious orthodoxy and political conservatism is Dr. Robert L. Cleath, a student in San Francisco Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) until he graduated as a bachelor of divinity at the end of May. At San Francisco Theological, Dr. Cleath (a doctor of philosophy and a college instructor before he began to study for the ministry) stirred up a considerable fuss, noticed in California newspapers, by presuming to differ with the avant garde moral and theological doctrines enunciated by Dr. Theodore Gill (president of SFT) and the dominant clique in the faculty.