Every week we ask interesting people what book they think President Trump should read. In the past, we've talked with Bret Stephens and Christina Hoff Sommers, among others. This week we spoke with the political philosopher Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government at Harvard University and…
Grade inflation has popped up again in the news, this time with the disclosure that it has spread to American high schools. High schools, public and especially private, now serve up 50 percent A’s to their students, just like the universities. It’s part of the college preparation track in high…
THE WORD "HONOR" is not one we hear much these days. It sounds quaint when we read it of the past and pretentious if applied to the present. We prefer to speak more realistically, more candidly, of self-interest.
From the Foundation for Constitutional Govenrment:
WEEKLY STANDARD editor William Kristol provided his post-election analysis with the Brookings Institution's William Galston and Boston College professor Susan Shell at Harvard University last week. Moderated by Harvard professor and frequent Conversations with Bill Kristol guest Harvey Mansfield,…
While serious foreign policy debate, like any kind of serious policy debate, has been virtually absent in this election, not talking about problems doesn't make them go away. In fact, the world has gotten much more dangerous under President Obama, and dealing with it will be a key challenge of the…
In "Aristotle on Economics and the Flourishing Life," the first in a collection of essays Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing, Harvey Mansfield writes, "What is a better person? It is one with a better soul. Aristotle's moral, political, and economic thought is based on the soul…Human beings…
At the beginning of the baseball season, we announced in the Kristol Clear newsletter a contest in which you had a chance to pick the teams that would make the World Series, and the winner. We've got the entries, are dutifully keeping track as promised, and the payoff will be YUUGE.
It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Harvey Mansfield's latest "Conversation with Bill Kristol" is a discussion of his wonderful 1993 book, America's Constitutional Soul. But I was all the more pleased to tune in and discover how Kristol begins their discussion: by comparing America's…
Saturday's must-read: Harvey Mansfield in the Wall Street Journal, "Why Donald Trump is No Gentleman."
The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol feature Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield:
This morning, in the boss's weekly newsletter (sign up here for free!) Bill previewed his latest conversation with political scientist Harvey Mansfield:
Meanwhile, at Harvard . . . We note that a frequent and valued contributor to these pages, Harvey C. Mansfield, has weighed in on the controversy there over the renaming of the House Masters (overseers, if you can forgive that word, of the college's undergraduate residences). Mansfield offered…
The latest Conversation With Bill Kristol, featuring Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield:
Writing in his weekly newsletter, the boss plugged the latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol.
These commencement remarks were delivered at the John Adams Academy, a charter high school in Roseville, California, on June 5. A graduation ceremony is a moment of pride in which we do honor to our graduates—and congratulations to you all—and to their parents and their teachers who were such a…
Harvey Mansfield, writing for City Journal:
The latest episode of Conversations Will Bill Kristol, featuring Harvey Mansfield on Leo Strauss:
Two friends of mine, Walter Berns and Harry Jaffa, died on January 10. They had not been on friendly terms for many years, but death took them together. They were joined also by being leaders, with Herbert Storing, Martin Diamond, and Ralph Lerner, of a group of a dozen or so students of Leo…
The latest from Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield:
Feminism is in control of America’s colleges and universities, where its principles at least are held as dogmas unquestioned and unopposed. Yet in what should be a paradise with those principles at work, women speak of a “rape culture” that sounds like the patriarchal hell we thought we’d left…
Last week, a headline in the Harvard Crimson confirmed that Harvard is continuing its depressing slide from an elite educational institution to a really expensive way to boost the self-esteem of America’s overachieving youth: “Substantiating Fears of Grade Inflation, Dean Says Median Grade at…
On board the ms Noordam sailing from Italy to Greece, with a break from both sightseeing and panels, it seemed advisable to me 1) to ignore the goings-on in Washington, and 2) to find time for an article I'd set aside to read, Harvey Mansfield's "Machiavelli's enterprise" in the October New…
Sohrab Ahmari interviews Harvey Mansfield for the Wall Street Journal:
James Q. Wilson, a longtime teacher in the government department at Harvard, and an all-time political scientist, has died. He was a Californian who went to college at the University of Redlands, got his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and then came to Harvard. At the end of his career, he went…
As his 80th birthday approaches, TWS contributor and friend (and my teacher) Harvey Mansfield is profiled in the Harvard Crimson. It's a perceptive and fair article, and provides further evidence for the hopeful view that today's students are surprisingly open-minded and intelligent despite—or…
Stephen Greenblatt’s book on the influence of Lucretius is clever and curious—and notable for the ambition expressed in its title. Written as a scholar’s lecture but with a writer’s finesse in its many useful asides and pleasing digressions, his account of the Roman poet-
What with Arnold and DSK, male transgression is once again in the news. Let’s not equate the two cases—one is forgivable, the other, if the accusations are true, is not. Together with these male transgressions is the reaction to them, still more interesting. The reaction shows the power of morality…
Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift
One group of those involved in the present financial crisis has so far escaped notice--the economists. They are masters in the science of prediction, but as a group, if not to a man, they failed to predict a crisis that has wiped out nearly half the wealth invested in the stock market and elsewhere…
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a hero with the hero's virtue of courage. He displayed courage, he reflected on it. The display was for all to see, the reflection was deep, difficult, and reserved. Back to this in a moment.
The wrappings are off and the Christmas gifts stand exposed to the light of day. Did you get what you wanted? Christmas is under attack not only for materialism, not only for multicultural failure, but now also for lack of utility. Economists as ambitious as they are cagey--perhaps bored with…
In his grand confrontation with the Iranian president, President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University did his best to satisfy his American critics. He was tough, not soft; he avoided euphemisms, called the man whom he was addressing a "petty and cruel dictator." President Ahmadinejad had been…
As if we were back in eighteenth-century France, atheist tracts are abroad in our land, their flamboyant titles defiant. The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, Letter to a Christian Nation, Atheist Manifesto, Atheist Universe: These are not subtle insinuations against God, requiring inferences from…
Plato and the
We sometimes hear of the place of the great books in a democratic education (not, unfortunately, at Harvard). When it is spoken of approvingly, that place is at the center or in the foundation of education or both. We also sometimes hear of the need for excellence in our education. For some reason…
FIVE YEARS have now passed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and what have our universities been doing? I can tell you about Harvard, and the answer is not reassuring.
Editor's Note: Harvey Mansfield, one of America's leading political scientists and a widely published author, will deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most…
Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus
Open Secrets / Inward Prospects
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Editor's Note: Harvey Mansfield, one of America's leading political scientists and a widely published author, will deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most…
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
Editor's Note: Harvey Mansfield, one of America's leading political scientists and a widely published author, will deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most…
A book like Pierre Manent's The City of Man doesn't come along every day. Originally published in France in 1994 and now brought out in English by Princeton University Press, its is a fundamental book, and it raises a fundamental question: What is man?
Christopher Lasch
John Patrick Diggins, a provocative academic who writes primarily on American politics, has the happy faculty of raising your interest without entirely satisfying it. His latest book seems at first glance a departure from his previous work, but it isn't at all. For in Max Weber: Politics and the…
Editor's Note: Harvey Mansfield, one of America's leading political scientists and a widely published author, will deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most…
A 58-page report from the president of Harvard on "Diversity and Learning" may not seem like hot stuff -- and it isn't, really -- but it shows where American education is today. Since Harvard is run by liberals and has been for some time, it is no surprise that Nell Rudenstine should write a…