A FRESH York Times Editors’ Choice

The former dean of Yale Law School argues the fact that feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is out of place at institutions whose job is to get ready citizens to live in a captivating democracy.

In his tenure at Yale, Anthony Kronman has watched students march across campus to protest the names of buildings and seen colleagues resign over emails about Halloween costumes. He is no stranger to recent confrontations at American colleges. But where about The Assault on American Superiority many see just the suppression of free talk, the babying of college students, and the drive to bury the imperfect elements of our history, Kronman identifies in these on-campus clashes a threat to your democracy.

As Kronman argues in The Assault on American Superiority, the founders of our nation discovered over three generations ago that in order for this country to have a robust democratic government, its citizens have to be trained to have challenging skins, to create up their own minds, also to earn arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their aspect is nearer to the truth. Quite simply, to prepare people to choose good leaders, you need to carefully turn them into intelligent fighters, people who can take strikes and think clearly so they’re not really manipulated by demagogues.

Kronman is the 1st to connect today’s campus debates back again to the history of American ideals, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams showing how these contemporary controversies threaten the best of our intellectual customs. His tone is definitely warm and positive, that of a humanist and a fan of the humanities who’s passionate about educating students with the capacity of living up to the needs of a growing democracy.

Incisive and wise, The Assault on American Quality makes the radical debate that to graduate as good citizens, college students have to be tested in a system that isn’t wholly centered on being great to them.