When Hamas launched horrific attacks on Israel, anti-Israel protests swept college campuses across America. Before Israel had had time to bury her dead, leftist students and academics oozed anti-Israeli hatred.
‘Woke’ ideas on college campus clearly have real world consequences. Forty years after Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind, everything he warned about has come to pass – and then some.
Abandoning the Western canon has not widened horizons for young Americans. It has narrowed them. Ignoring classical thought and key figures in Western philosophy has not better equipped America to deal with the wider world. It has made it far harder.
As American academia has embraced moral and cultural relativism, it has often produced academics with little of value to teach anyone. Everything of worth and beauty is seen through the sterile prism of identity. (Incidentally, have you ever met a ‘woke’ person that was happy?)
Instead of lamenting this, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy has done something about it. Two years ago, we launched the Mississippi Leadership Academy designed to give young Mississippians the mind-set they need to be agents for change in their state.
We give participants practical insights, with lessons on how laws are made, the role of the Governor or the State Auditor. We also give them insights into some of the building blocks of conservative thought; How do free markets work? Why did the Founding Fathers manage to produce such a successful republic? Why is the West so much more innovative than the rest?
This year, for the first time, we have started to record each of the course sessions and put them online. Although we have about 20 students sitting in on each class, I am delighted to say that over the past couple of weeks several hundred have watched the sessions online.
You can watch some of our sessions here:
Click above to watch some of our sessions:
Our Leadership Academy is the antidote to woke. It is also a lot of fun. Last year, about a third of our graduates either worked or interned for state leaders.
