Roger Scruton

British philosopher and author Roger Scruton joined the 2002-2003 Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors fellows and faculty at Oriel College, Oxford, to deliver two lectures that helped to connect young conservatives with their living past. Scruton, formerly a professor at Birkbeck College in London and at Boston University, lectured from his work England: An Elegy. He told students that we are, in part, products of how we represent ourselves, and that England’s national character grew out of the institutions that best represent it: the Anglican Church, common law, and parliamentary government. To the extent that England is losing these institutions, Scruton argued, it is also losing its national character. Professor Scruton’s words challenged students and faculty to understand and preserve their own tradition and institutions in America.

Scruton’s talks initiated a week-long program in which Honors fellows and their mentors from across the country debated and discussed “Progress and Revolution: Utopian Ideology, Terror, and the Human Cost.” Jason Duke, ISI’s Honors Director and a former Honors student, began the program by telling students not only to listen to the faculty’s talks, but also to become part of the discussion. As is typical at an ISI Honors conference, this happened in abundance. Students talked one-to-one and in groups to ISI’s distinguished faculty members until one, two, and even three in the morning in the Oriel College lounge. “My favorite part of the conference,” John Montague of the University of Virginia remarked, “was the informal discussions between students and between students and professors over meals or at the bar.”

Throughout the week, students heard lectures and participated in group discussions at Oriel College and at the historic Oxford Union and Ashmolean Museum. At the Ashmolean, Hillsdale history professor Dr. Bradly Birzer delivered a stirring lecture on the devastating human cost of communism in the twentieth century. He invoked Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn as heroes of the Cold War: heroes who were uncompromising in their criticism of, and in their efforts to defeat, communist regimes.

On Thursday, students took a break from the lecture hall and Oxford’s lofty spires to visit the historic Globe Theater in London, where they saw a production of A Mid Summer Night’s Dream. Prior to the performance, students heard two lectures that encouraged them to consider the play in the context of the conference theme.

North Carolina State University professor R.V. Young summarized the Honors program best when he remarked: “These conferences are very important for providing moral, intellectual, and spiritual support for both faculty and students. They will help to reshape politics, business, and academic life in the coming years. Providing a cultural foundation for the rising generation is very important.”