The "Soulless" University

In today's Wall Street Journal, Professor Vincent J. Cannato observes that there is something wrong at America's university. He discusses former Harvard dean and current professor Henry Lewis' "Excellence Without a Soul," which argues that universities in general, and Harvard in particular, have "forgotten education." Lewis argues that Harvard

has lost, indeed willingly surrendered, its moral authority to shape the souls of its students. . . . Harvard articulates no ideals of what it means to be a good person.

And that's absolutely right. But there are two points worth noting:

(1) Given the morals and political proclivities of the Harvard faculty -- and of others at the nation's most elite secular universities, would you trust them to teach your child anything about what it means to be a "good person"?

(2) The adjective "secular" in the paragraph above is important. For the overwhelming majority of human beings, living as a "good person" is integrally connected with religious faith (and for the atheists, they are effectively "free riders" in a world still shaped by the religious beliefs of others, in practice if not in theory). And yet few places are as aggressively secular as the universities; religion is often seen as a superstition of the uneducated. It's virtually impossible to teach people how to be "good people," finally, at the core, without reference to religion.

When Harvard and other schools junked not only their religious heritage -- but, in large part, their respect for religion -- well, that's when they threw out their "moral authority."