Key Points
- For decades, the position of university trustee was largely a public honorific. This is changing. Republican governors are increasingly selecting trustees to lead and shape their institutions.
- This volume aims to generate and disseminate the knowledge necessary for conservative trustees to effectively govern their institutions.
- We asked eminent education scholars to address topics such as intellectual diversity, civic education, financial management, academic rigor, teaching quality, and the proper role of a college trustee.
Introduction
Intellectual historians date the launch of the modern American conservative movement to the publication of a critique on our universities. In God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom,” William F. Buckley Jr. lamented that his alma mater was shirking its responsibility to transmit the cultural and moral heritage of the United States and instead embracing moral relativism and economic collectivism. He called on Yale University’s trustees to exert more administrative control and intellectual direction over their institution. They didn’t. And we know what happened next.
