At a conference on higher education at Harvard last September, keynote speaker Lawrence Summers said that universities should reject the “cafeteria approach” to curricula and should teach about American national identity and culture. It is heartening to see that Summers has understood the importance of culture–and the connection between culture and national identity–in contradistinction to the notion that America has no culture whatsoever but consists solely of ideas shared by all humanity.

A brief report on the conference, sponsored by the Philanthropy Roundtable and titled “Promise and Peril Higher Education in the 21st Century,” is carried in the most recent issue of Inside Academe, the newsletter of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Summers commended the work of ACTA in his address.