ON a crisp autumn evening, some of the nation’s brightest undergraduates file into a mahogany-paneled hall, where they take turns holding forth on the topic “Resolved, That Liberty Has More Value than Life.” Dead white males from Socrates to Patrick Henry are scrutinized for insights. At lunch the next day, a leading authority on Leo Strauss engages the students in an exploration of Aristotle’s Ethics. The scent of pipe smoke fills the air. And Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is required reading for the next week’s dinner discussions.
At this point, most conservatives would expect to be rudely awakened by their alarm clocks, wistfully chasing away their dreams of an academic world in which the monuments of Western thought are cherished. And yet this dream is reality at Yale University, and like-minded collegians elsewhere are taking notes.
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