On October 19th, Justice Scalia spoke at a conference hosted at Georgetown U by the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy.

On October 16, Michael Zuckert spoke at the University of Chicago as the inaugural lecture sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Principles of the American Founding.

On October 28th, Tufts University will hold a day-long symposium in honor of America’s Founding, sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

The signs are proliferating that academia is growing more accessible to the expression of conservative approaches to American civics and history. Individual departments in the humanities and social sciences remain largely closed to conservative perspectives, to be sure, but spaces are opening up on campus, outside those departments, for centers of study and lecture events devoted to a different outlook. And from what I can see, they are generating a lot more intellectual excitement than are the established departments and programs, whose expressions and practices have become so routine that they do nothing but discourage participation from everyone except those with an interest in their perpetuation.