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Hello
John,
This month I am highlighting just a few of the Kirk Center’s strategic partnerships and the programs we participate in and support. Collaborations are crucial to any organization and we are fortunate to have many excellent partnerships with student groups, colleges, and national organizations for seminars.
The Wisdom of Cicero Lives On
One such example was supporting the annual Ciceronian Society conference that took place in Plano, Texas, from February 29 to March 2. The Ciceronian Society is a group of faculty, educators, and friends who meet to consider questions about “tradition, place, and things divine.” That’s an important mission! And one hard to find in today’s universities.
The Kirk Center team at the Ciceronian event participated in a thoughtful panel entitled “Mid-20th Century American Conservatism.” The panel was chaired by Luke Sheahan (Duquesne University), editor of the University Bookman. Papers were presented by Darrell Falconburg, the Kirk Center’s Academic Program Officer, as well as by John Wilsey (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), a recent Wilbur Fellow at the Kirk Center. Michael Lucchese, who chaired our panel in Washington, DC, this past December on “The Conservative Mind at 70,” presented a paper, as did Jonathan Brubaker (Faulkner University), who first discovered Russell Kirk at a seminar in Mecosta this past summer.
Darrell shared a brief history of the Russell Kirk Center as well as its many existing and new programs with all of the conference participants. As Luke Sheahan remarked at the beginning of the panel, Russell Kirk and the postwar intellectual movement that he helped catalyze remain a source of intellectual inspiration today.
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Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning
Another key Kirk Center partner is the CiRCE Institute–the Center for Independent Research on Classical Education. As many of you know, Circe is a leading organization in the revitalization of classical and Christian education in America. Since the early 2000s, the Circe Institute has awarded its prestigious Russell Kirk Paideia Prize to honor excellence in education to a teacher who has made a notable contribution to the renewal of American education along classical lines.
This year, the Russell Kirk Center will sponsor this prize during the Circe Institute’s National Conference from July 17 - 20. I will be speaking at the awards dinner, and Darrell will lead a colloquium on Kirk’s educational writings. Through this new and continuing partnership, teachers across the country will be introduced to the Kirk Center’s resources and programs and be able to avail themselves of opportunities from an academic center dedicated to introducing students to America’s unique history and place within Western civilization.
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Roger Scruton’s American Legacy
This coming May 19 - 20, the Kirk Center will be co-sponsoring a major conference on Sir Roger Scruton and America. We will join with the Center for American Culture and Ideas led by the acclaimed composer and cultural critic Daniel Asia to consider the ongoing importance of Scruton’s writings. I’m looking forward to moderating a panel. The event will be held at Georgetown University and AEI in Washington, D.C. If you are in the Washington area and want to learn more about one of the most important conservative philosophers of the last century, you may register here. I hope to see you there.
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Japan’s Embassy Honoring Kirk and American Conservatism
For those of you who are attending the Philadelphia Society conference in Tampa April 19 - 21, join us for a very special Kirk Center program. In collaboration with the Japanese Embassy, we will be hosting two seminar discussions bookending the weekend on the legacy of American conservatism in Japan and its current prospects. The sessions will be led by Dr. Hiro Aida, a prominent Japanese journalist and translator of Kirk’s books into Japanese. These sessions will also include George Nash, Wilfred McClay, and Luke Sheahan. If you are interested in attending, please contact Emily at [email protected].
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Digitizing and Discovering in the Kirk Archives
At the Kirk Library, Center staff and interns have made excellent progress digitizing the entire collection of Russell Kirk’s lectures for a total of 607 lectures. Kirk spoke at hundreds of college campuses, organizations, and associations over the course of 40 years. This month’s featured Classic Kirk piece is an excerpt from his address at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1972: Renewing the Moral Order in American Society.
Our able interns have also digitized 586 reviews of Russell Kirk’s books. In the process, we discovered an important review by Wilhelm Roepke, written in German for Universitas in 1958. And you might enjoy this tidbit from James Burnham’s review of Prospects for Conservatives in The Annals of the American Academy:
“He is not only reviving the conservative tradition, but he is rescuing it: both from sterile reactionaries who have degraded it, and from verbalists who by paying out a few modish conservative phrases are at present trying to hitch a ride on the shifting Zeitgeist. Mr. Kirk’s books are good meat, even for vegetarians.”
Essays and other media forms about Russell Kirk continue to flow into the archive. In 2023, we added 28 new pieces on or referencing him to the digital archive, including this excellent piece by longtime Heritage Foundation President Dr. Edwin J. Feulner in Modern Age. He wrote:
“An advocate of audacious conservatism, Kirk was unafraid to extol unfashionable virtues and unpopular principles. He unblushingly called for the reinstatement of manners and morals and praised prudence and humility as the basis of sound public policy. Describing wisdom and virtue as the proper end of education, he campaigned for a return to classical learning, the liberal arts, and Christian principles. In literature, he advocated reviving high moral standards, and in life argued for the return of chivalry and manliness."
I’d also like to bring to your attention Josh Lewis’ Saving Elephants podcast interview with University Bookman editor Luke Sheahan. It begins with a conversation on the differing views of academic freedom between Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr. It is an important legacy of the educational renewal debate in our country.
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Kirk on Campus with the new Bradley Prize winner
Recently, we held two Kirk on Campus lectures at Hope College and Calvin University on questions related to free trade, nationalism, and China by Samuel Gregg, a well-known public intellectual and Hayek Chair at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). It has just been announced that he was chosen to receive a 2024 Bradley Prize for his contributions to a better understanding political economy and the free society. That’s certainly a prestigious prize, so congratulations to Sam Gregg!
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Click on the photo above to watch the video of the event with Dr. Gregg.
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Last but not least, the Kirk Center needs your support. Please consider donating today. We operate on a tight budget and hold many events for students, professors, political leaders, writers, and the general public. We held 31 events this past year for more than 1,100 participants. Every gift generates a great cultural yield!
Sincerely,
Jeffrey O. Nelson, Ph.D.
Executive Director & CEO
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