Holiday Books

The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture, by Heather MacDonald

An alternative title to this book might be Identity Politics 101, because Heather MacDonald takes all of it on in a book full of much of what she has written on the subject over the past few years, covering the campus rape myth, the continuing advance of multiculturalism, what she calls policing sexual desire, the #MeToo movement, affirmative action in college admissions, the microaggression farce, the “implicit bias” fraud, and how all of this is corrupting American higher education and impoverishing our students.  Beyond the obvious criminality of mobs who are attacking campus speakers who deign to espouse thoughts that are at odds with those of the fascists of the left, her concern about the underlying ideas at work here that are undermining truth on these campuses has very real consequences for  the mission of higher education at many of our most elite institutions.

In addition to her work on these issues, she has been particularly active at the Manhattan Institute in rooting out the fraudulent reporting in the “war on cops” in numerous television appearances and in a book by that name along with another one entitled Are Cops Racist? How the War Against the Police Harms Black Americans.  She is doing lonely work here, and essential work, and I can’t recommend it in stronger terms.

Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times, by Leon R. Kass

As some introductory comments point out, although Leon Kass is best known as a bioethicist, at heart he is a humanist.  I first came in contact with his work when he was appointed Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics by George W. Bush, and I was immediately impressed with the introduction he wrote to the Council’s report to the President, which included this important observation: “……the President’s decision {to create the Council} established, or re-established, the precedent that scientific research, being a human activity, is primarily a moral endeavor…..”.  But of course at St. John’s College and the University of Chicago for many years he has been helping students and colleagues seek out the most important questions on the issues of life through the study of the great works of literature, philosophy, and science.  This book covers a wide range of these issues written over several decades, all of which are timely and on point–they speak to what the title suggests: finding meaning in modern times.

After an overview, the essays are organized into four sections, some written with his wife, Amy, as follows: Love, Family, and Friendship; Human Excellence and Human Dignity; In Search of Wisdom: and The Aspirations of Mankind: Athens, Jerusalem, and the Gettysburg Address.  There are jewels in each section, but I should point out that the essay on the Gettysburg Address is a classic, the best of many I have read on the subject.

If I had to pick a theme or a common thread throughout the book it would be a critique of the ideology of scientism as the foundation of meaning, a critique that is much needed and well-articulated by Kass in a number of contexts in the essays.  He doesn’t wear a religion on his sleeve, but in a number of instances I was reminded of a passage from the Bible, 2 Corinthians 4:18: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”.

A great read.