New York City Lecture
The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American DemocracyINVITES YOU TO A BOOK FORUM IN NEW YORK CITY:
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
12:00 PM–2:00 PM (Luncheon Served at 12:30 PM)
Location:
UNIVERSITY CLUB
ONE WEST 54TH STREET AT 5TH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
(Please note University Club Dress Code–Collared Shirts and Ties Required)
Speaker:
PATRICK DENEEN
Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government,
Founding Director, Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy, Georgetown University
"THE CRISIS OF THE LIBERAL ARTS AND WHY THEY MUST BE RESTORED"
Introductory Remarks:
JAMES PIERESON
President, William E. Simon Foundation, Inc.
Many critics of higher education attribute the decline and irrelevancy of the liberal arts to radical developments in the humanities, including multiculturalism, postmodernism and Marxism. What is often ignored are deeper structural changes that have increasingly driven the liberal arts toward irrelevancy, particularly the growing dominance of the natural and social sciences.
The dominance of the natural sciences has resulted in many of the contemporary pathologies of the university, including the prevalence of specialized (and incomprehensible) research, the narrowing of faculty focus, the neglect of undergraduate education in favor of graduate training, and the abandonment of general education requirements that are guided by a vision of what constitutes the well-educated human being. The prospects for American constitutional government lies in recovering the true end of the university - an education in self-government, and hence, an education in what it is to be free.
Please RSVP (Acceptances Only) by September 14 to tocquevilleforum@georgetown.edu
Or call 202-687-8536.
If you accept and find you are unable to attend, please be sure to let us know.
(Please note University Club Dress Code–Collared Shirts and Ties Required)
Sponsored by: Manhattan Institute • 52 Vanderbilt Avenue • New York, NY 10017 • Phone: 212-599-7000 • Fax: 212-599-3494
"Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights. Religion is considered as the guardian of mores, and mores are regarded as the guarantee of laws..."
- Alexis de Tocqueville