Reclaiming Liberal Education in America

With this collection of 40 columns written for RealClearPolitics from 2014 through 2025, Peter Berkowitz offers a short history of the decline of liberal education in America and provides a concise case for, and sketches measures essential to, reclaiming it. The essays clarify liberal education's aims, structure and content, and spirit. They illuminate the stakes for freedom and democratic self-government in America, placing contemporary controversies about higher education--especially at the nation's most selective colleges and universities--in their larger intellectual and political context. And they explore the variety of dysfunctions that plague American campuses, including censorship, curtailment of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct, invidious and unlawful allocation of benefits to students and faculty based on race and other forms of group identity, and politicization and hollowing of the curriculum. Berkowitz pays special attention to the surge of antisemitism on campuses following Iran-backed Hamas's October 2023 massacre in southern Israel. He examines the ensuing public reckoning with the sorry condition of American higher education. And he delves into the Trump administration's clashes with Columbia, Harvard, and other universities over antisemitism; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and free speech and intellectual diversity. Throughout the book, Berkowitz proposes reforms for returning colleges and universities to the mission that best serves the public interest, which is to equip young people to thoughtfully exercise the rights and discharge the responsibilities of freedom.