Someday I’ll be a dead white man. . .

My recent critique of political theory instruction aside, I think Yglesias is quite right; the notion that dead white men are being chased off university syllabi is absurd. In fairness to Brooks, he doesn’t actually claim that this is the responsibility of leftist professors who hate Western civilization and all that it stands for, although this may be what he means. Virtually any political theory course that you take at any college, including UW, will include a hearty selection of canonical writers. Indeed, you’ll be lucky if you get anything else; very few people feel qualified to teach Confucius or Mencius, for example.

Detachment from the canon is driven much more by student choice than by faculty choice. Students in political science, for example, seem much more reluctant to take classes that include canonical writings than to take classes on international relations, American politics, and comparative politics. Students focusing on engineering or the hard sciences see little reason at all to delve into English or political theory, and fill out their requirements with marginally more practical courses. I think it’s a shame that some sectors of the university have become little more than glorified trade schools, but leftist faculty certainly are not to blame.