Friday, August 30, 2019

Anthony Kronman - The Assault on American Excellence - Book Review

The author, a blue blood former Dean of the Yale Law School, makes the case for educational elitism in our climate of cloying egalitarianism and political correctness.

In making the case for elitism, the idea that a college education should be for training leaders and thinkers in our country, rather than just vocational training, the author quotes John Adams and Tocqueville extensively.  He certainly writes from the point of view of so-called elitist schools like Yale.  Both believed in a natural aristocracy of intellect rather than an aristocracy of inherited wealth: this kind of aristocracy was inevitable and natural.

Is a Yale degree more aristocratic than an Auburn degree?

A democrat outside academia and an aristocrat within the walls.  P. 72

"For the past forty-six years, Bakke has been the starting point for all debate about the meaning and value of diversity in higher education."  P. 124

Whereas Justice Stevens defends the Bakke decision, this former Dean says that the decision has been a disaster for equality in college admissions.

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