Buckley 1951. God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom”
Buckley, William F. [1951] 2021. God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom.” 70th anniversary edition. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway.
I had never read this book before, despite its fame as a monument from the beginning of the modern conservative movement — and despite the fact, as its subtitle suggests, it is actually/also about Academic Freedom (actually I had never realised this in all the years I’ve read about the book).
I think it is fair to say that I was surprised by this on all accounts. I had not at all realised how ridiculously sophomoric it was — it is basically a post-graduation attack on the foibles, teaching techniques, and hobby horses of the faculty who taught Buckley at Yale during his time there in the late 1940s (I’d say in l’esprit d’escalier, but my understanding is that some of this comes from his time as the editor of the Yale Daily News). Buckley chooses a professor, alleges some crazy things they are supposed to have said, and then chuckles with us about the eccentrics. Kind of an Anti-Calendar in book form.
One thing I did find quite interesting about the book in the context of my current reading on Academic Freedom is how similar it is in many structural ways in its understanding of Academic Freedom to the position taken by Bérubé and Ruth in their recent book, It’s not Free Speech: Race, democracy, and the future of academic freedom.: in both books, the claim is made that universities (and academic freedom) should be understood as being about service to some higher, societal, goals: Antiracism and democracy (I think defined in the sense of, “vitiating the current trend to authoritarian populism among Republicans”) in the case of Bérubé and Ruth; and Christianity and Democracy (in the sense of “procapitalism”) in the case of Buckley. Neither book as any patience for those who are not on board with these larger purposes, and both take a remarkably similar approach — calling out and ridiculing — to examples of current scholars who do not reflect what the authors consider to be the proper overarching purpose of the university.
