"Imagine Robert DeNiro as an eminent conservative scholar of ancient Athens." That's how professor Dr. Donald Kagan is described. He is retiring from Yale University and gave his farewell lecture this week. He's not pleased with what he has seen at Yale.
"On campus," he said, "I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness." Rare are "faculty with atypical views," he charged. "Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values."
He was given a standing ovation by the students and the faculty.
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