Word: kirks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...academic freedom in the U.S. really in danger? Absolutely, says rising young (36) Historian Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind)-but not alone for the reasons that most teachers seem to think. In his latest book, Academic Freedom (Henry Regnery; $3.75), Kirk points an accusing finger at the teaching profession itself. Some of freedom's most earnest champions, he writes, are actually gnawing away its roots...
...reason for this. Kirk holds, is that many a teacher does not begin to understand the true basis of academic freedom. It is not, as Philosopher Sidney Hook insists, a gift from the community, nor is it justified simply because it benefits society. "Academic freedom, in short, belongs to that category of rights called 'natural rights,' and is expressed in custom, not in statute." Plato's Academy "was not founded by the community, nor did it owe its primary allegiance to the community. It was instituted by private persons ... to enable them to pursue the Truth without...
Today, says Kirk, the ancient notion that teachers are Bearers of the Word, servants only of the Truth, has fallen into disrepute. In place of Truth "derived from apprehension of an order more than natural or material," such scholars as John Dewey and Sidney Hook "early became attached to democracy as an ideal, and in time made democracy into an abstraction and an absolute, for lack of any other...
Destroying Negative. Unfortunately, says Kirk, the fear of any dogma has led to a completely erroneous definition of academic freedom. Such "doctrinaire liberals" as Historian Henry Steele Commager and President Harold Taylor of Sarah Lawrence "think of the Academy as a place where professors, like the Sophists, talk perpetually of the impossibility of knowing anything with certitude, and the necessity for considering every point of view, and the need for being ever so liberal. These latter gentlemen put me in mind of Bacon's famous line: 'What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay...
...quarter of stars, James Mason, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas, and Kirk Douglas, take up most of the space in the submarine. But the actors become submerged in the Nautilus' travels and never seem to matter much in the story. Lorre, as the scientist's apprentice, is surpassed in his bid to provide comic relief by a very talented seal named Ezzy. Unhampered by dialogue, the seal, in fact, puts on the film's best performance, Colorful explosion, an occasional good scene with Mason playing the organ in his captain's quarters, and a ludicrous attack on the Nautilus...