Ensuring a future for the humanities in Australia

Back in 1951, the great conservative institution-builder William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book about Yale University. However, what he described occurring in New Haven would ultimately apply more broadly to “Behemoth State Universities” and the Ivy League. Institutions that were designed for the formation of people of high learning, genuine leadership, civic virtue, and Christian cultural sensibilities, had turned their back on that original vision. Instead, Buckley mourned, Yale “addresses itself to the task of persuading [its students] to be atheistic socialists”.  

As James Allan wrote in last week’s Spectator Australia, the arts and humanities faculties of universities in the…