Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Assault on American Excellence
    The Assault on American Excellence
    The Assault on American Excellence
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Assault on American Excellence

    Written by Anthony T. Kronman

    Narrated by Anthony T. Kronman

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    “I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal

    The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy.

    College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing—over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students—has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem.

    “Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues.

    Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society—and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateAug 20, 2019
    ISBN9781508292487
    Author

    Anthony T. Kronman

    Anthony Kronman is a writer, lawyer, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a former dean of the Yale Law School from 1994–2004. He is the author or coauthor of five books, including The Assault on American Excellence, Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, and Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan. Professor Kronman taught at the University of Minnesota Law School and the University of Chicago Law School before joining the Yale faculty. Outside of his academic obligations, Kronman served on the board of various non-profit organizations including the Foote School in New Haven, Yale University Press, and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. He is a member of Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation, the Connecticut Bar Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

    Related to The Assault on American Excellence

    Related audiobooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Assault on American Excellence

    4.5/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      The Assault on American Excellence, Anthony T. Kronman, author and narratorAnthony Kronman is a professor at Yale who has been startled by the school’s acquiescence to activists. He believes that schools should educate minds before encouraging the students to act on issues they cannot fully understand. He understands that certain issues are triggers for some groups and might make them feel uncomfortable, but he believes that in order to educate the mind and allow the cream to rise to the top, a student must be challenged with ideas that force them to think, even if it makes them uncomfortable. In social situations, he understands the need for fairness, equality and comfort, but in the classroom, he believes it is more important to deal with controversy by studying it, rather than ignoring it or erasing it. There is a democracy of the community but an aristocracy of the mind.Kronman cites several instances of controversy which he finds difficult to comprehend. Some concern the idea of appropriate/inappropriate Halloween costumes, another is the idea of offensive speech and/or behavior that is offensive because it triggers a memory of something the student might not have even experienced but is still uncomfortable thinking about, then there is the controversial effort to remove historic statues because something in that person’s past that is being memorialized is found to be offensive to some, while another is the removal of the term Master from the school because some students felt it is a negative trigger hearkening back to the time of slavery, even though the way in which the term is being used indicates superior achievement and not the master/slave concept. The term in the environment of Yale, had nothing to do with that shameful part of our history. The Halloween costume controversy actually caused the removal of two beloved educators who chose to leave after being attacked and is a sad result of narrow minds.Kronman makes the case for the aristocracy of the mind, rather than the aristocracy of the social classes, by citing the thoughts of many historic authorities and philosophers, like Babbits, Holmes, DeToqueville, Mencken, Nietsche and many more, revealing their quotes, ideas and explanations. He explains how the cream should rise to the top and be rewarded in an educational environment in order to allow the best and the brightest to succeed, while also allowing those not quite so intellectually gifted the opportunity to improve and achieve good results. We are all socially equal, but we are not intellectually equal, therefore there is a value to allowing the idea of encouraging inequality in the educational environment without which we might all be content being mediocre. The message I received from the book is that while diversity in all areas of life is to be aspired to on the campus and in the greater world, so that people from all walks of life learn to live together in peace and harmony, it is also necessary to be able to tolerate a diversity of thought so that critical thinking is the end result rather than an emotionally immature student body that cannot deal with reality and must all think alike so that success is not valued.The author narrated his own novel. I believe that was a mistake since his voice droned on in a monotone, often sounding hoarse and without energy. Without a hard copy, one would be hard pressed to truly take in and absorb the entire book.
    • 4/5
      The image on the book cover is perfectly emblematic of the book's content: the contemporary university's soul has died. The relentless emphasis on diversity as well as the distrust of excellence (the canon is just an elitist notion entrenching power asymmetries of dead white men) has changed university culture in the twenty first century. And yet Kronman makes rightly argues that universities should be places where excellence - in the sense of more developed humans - can flourish and be respected. This book is a strong rallying cry for the immense value of universities as places where students can study the humanities and be exposed to greatness and complexity and wonder and grow as humans. The ivory tower can, and traditionally has, housed an aristocracy of the spirit. Use this book as a weapon.