When Ursinus College announced the sudden retirement of John Strassburger this year, citing “personal and health reasons,” people who knew the Pennsylvania college’s longtime president—and knew of his eight-year battle with prostate cancer—may have feared the worst.

…

Nevertheless, he looked good, if a little tired. His office was stocked with student art and books he had not yet had time to read, amid the challenges of running a small college. (Pleasure reading is one of the things he looks forward to in retirement.)

He has more than 40 years of experience in higher education, including 15 as president of Ursinus.

Audio of the interview can be heard here.

Inaugural Event

The American Political Science Association has recently recognized the formation of a related group called “American Political Thought.” The group was started by Steven Kautz and Benjamin Kleinerman of Michigan State University for the purpose of providing a much needed outlet for scholarship:

Statement of Need:

The purpose of this related group is to promote interest in, and provide an outlet for, the presentation of research on American Political Thought.  American Political Thought comprises, among other things, the study of fundamental and/or authoritative texts that are constitutive of American political life; the study of the first principles that ground constitutionalism and democracy in the United States; and the study of the public philosophies or sentiments that have animated political parties (and ultimately the “public mind,” to borrow Lincoln’s expression) throughout American political history.  It is related to, but distinct from, the study of American political development and institutions, on one hand, and the study of modern political philosophy and contemporary democratic theory, on the other.

Panel:

The inaugural panel, entitled “Philosophy and American Political Thought” will held Saturday, September 4^th at the American Political Science convention in Washington D.C. (meeting room TBD):

• James Ceaser, UVA: “Alexis de Tocqueville and the Two-Founding Thesis”
• Randal Hendrickson, Duke University: “Liberalism and Republicanism in the American Political Tradition”
• Thomas Pangle, UT Austin: “Montesquieu and the Basis of Liberal Modernity in America”

Reception:

A joint reception with the Jack Miller Center will be held September 3^rd at 7:30 in Columbia 1 at the Hilton Washington.

All are invited to attend.

MIDLAND, MI – Northwood University has launched an academic center dedicated to the principles and habits of liberty, ethical conduct and free enterprise. The Forum for Citizenship and Enterprise inaugurated its first year of programming in the 2009-2010 academic year thanks to a generous seed money grant provided by the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History. Professor Glenn Moots, who is serving as director for the Forum, plans a full schedule of events for the 2010-2011 academic year thanks to a grant from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

The Forum’s new lecture series brought two distinguished speakers to campus. In October 2009, Professor Richard Gamble addressed a large audience about the English roots of American liberty. Gamble is the Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Chair in History and Political Science at Hillsdale College. He is author of The War for Righteousness and editor of The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being. In April 2010, Professor Carl Richard spoke to an audience of campus and community members about the influence of the Greeks and Romans on America’s constitutional framers. Richard is professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and author of a number of books addressing America’s relationship to the ancient classics including Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts and The Founders and the Classics.

The Forum also began ongoing faculty and student reading groups. Faculty discussed selections from Professor Gamble’s The Great Tradition. Students debated a variety of themes from C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.

Professor Moots is planning an expanded schedule of events for 2010-2011, including bringing more speakers to campus, expanding faculty and student book groups, scheduling more community events, and planning an academic conference in the summer of 2011.

In the 2010-2011 academic year, the Forum will shift focus to the intersection of economics with history. Integrating history, political science, economics and philosophy is in keeping with the liberal arts core that supplements Northwood’s specialty business programs. “We cannot teach our students about limited government, free enterprise or individual responsibility without the context of these four subjects,” Professor Moots said. “The intent of the Forum is to strengthen our delivery of the Northwood Idea in ways that have not been done before. We want our students and everyone in the Northwood community to be better citizens and better people. This will make them better business people, too.”

Teaching students the “tradition of freedom” is Northwood’s first outcome for its graduates and has been part of its mission since its founding in 1959. Dr. Moots hopes that the success of the Forum will help Northwood achieve further recognition as a leader in teaching this tradition. “Partnering with organizations such as the Jack Miller Center and the Atlas Foundation are very important for moving the Forum forward. Their support is a vote of confidence in Northwood’s future. Our increased commitment to teaching the tradition of freedom will be met with enthusiastic support from Northwood’s donors and friends. Their loyalty, along with new partnerships, will advance the work of the Forum and the Northwood Idea.”

Northwood’s Forum joins a number of prestigious partners who have partnered with the Jack Miller Center or the Atlas Foundation to create similar university programs and centers of academic excellence. Notable partners include Ivy League institutions such as Brown and Harvard, public universities such as University of Virginia and Michigan State University, and private colleges and universities such as Rhodes College, Villanova University and Grove City College.

About the Atlas Economic Research Foundation

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation serves as a catalyst and connector to link free-market organizations and individuals to the ideas, people and resources they need to promote a free society. Based in Washington D.C., and founded by the late Sir Antony Fisher, Atlas believes that economic prosperity and human flourishing are best achieved by advancing institutions grounded in free markets, rule of law and limited government. Since 1981, Atlas has been instrumental in creating and nurturing an international network of free-market public policy institutes; free market university-based academic centers and a cadre of individuals committed to achieving a free society. Atlas’s partners are active in the United States and on every continent across the globe. Atlas accepts no government funding and is not endowed. Its operations, including the grants it provides to think tanks in the U.S. and around the world, are financed entirely through gifts from individuals, philanthropic foundations and corporations. Atlas has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator for its financial stewardship. More information is available at http://atlasnetwork.org/.

About Northwood University

Northwood University is committed to the most personal attention to prepare students for success in their careers and in their communities; it promotes critical thinking skills and personal effectiveness, and the importance of ethics, individual freedom and responsibility.

Private, nonprofit and accredited, Northwood University specializes in managerial and entrepreneurial education at three full-service, residential campuses located in southern Florida, mid-Michigan and northern Texas. Adult Degree Programs are available in eight states with many course delivery options including online. The DeVos Graduate School offers full-time, evening and industry specific master’s degree programs for entrepreneurs and executives in Michigan, Texas and Switzerland. The Alden B. Dow Center for Creativity and Enterprise on the Midland, Michigan, Campus specializes in creative thinking and innovation development. International education is offered through terms abroad and in Program Centers in Switzerland, China, Malaysia, Bahrain and Sri Lanka. Northwood University also operates the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Maine.

History for Dollars

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: June 7, 2010

When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting. When the job market worsens, many students figure they can’t indulge in an English or a history major. They have to study something that will lead directly to a job.

So it is almost inevitable that over the next few years, as labor markets struggle, the humanities will continue their long slide. There already has been a nearly 50 percent drop in the portion of liberal arts majors over the past generation, and that trend is bound to accelerate. Once the stars of university life, humanities now play bit roles when prospective students take their college tours. The labs are more glamorous than the libraries.

But allow me to pause for a moment and throw another sandbag on the levee of those trying to resist this tide. Let me stand up for the history, English and art classes, even in the face of today’s economic realities.

Studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write. No matter what you do in life, you will have a huge advantage if you can read a paragraph and discern its meaning (a rarer talent than you might suppose). You will have enormous power if you are the person in the office who can write a clear and concise memo.

Studying the humanities will give you a familiarity with the language of emotion. In an information economy, many people have the ability to produce a technical innovation: a new MP3 player. Very few people have the ability to create a great brand: the iPod. Branding involves the location and arousal of affection, and you can’t do it unless you are conversant in the language of romance.

Studying the humanities will give you a wealth of analogies. People think by comparison — Iraq is either like Vietnam or Bosnia; your boss is like Narcissus or Solon. People who have a wealth of analogies in their minds can think more precisely than those with few analogies. If you go through college without reading Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon, you’ll have been cheated out of a great repertoire of comparisons.

Finally, and most importantly, studying the humanities helps you befriend The Big Shaggy.

Let me try to explain. Over the past century or so, people have built various systems to help them understand human behavior: economics, political science, game theory and evolutionary psychology. These systems are useful in many circumstances. But none completely explain behavior because deep down people have passions and drives that don’t lend themselves to systemic modeling. They have yearnings and fears that reside in an inner beast you could call The Big Shaggy.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when a governor of South Carolina suddenly chucks it all for a love voyage south of the equator, or when a smart, philosophical congressman from Indiana risks everything for an in-office affair.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when self-destructive overconfidence overtakes oil engineers in the gulf, when go-go enthusiasm intoxicates investment bankers or when bone-chilling distrust grips politics.

Those are the destructive sides of The Big Shaggy. But this tender beast is also responsible for the mysterious but fierce determination that drives Kobe Bryant, the graceful bemusement the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga showed when his perfect game slipped away, the selfless courage soldiers in Afghanistan show when they risk death for buddies or a family they may never see again.

The observant person goes through life asking: Where did that come from? Why did he or she act that way? The answers are hard to come by because the behavior emanates from somewhere deep inside The Big Shaggy.

Technical knowledge stops at the outer edge. If you spend your life riding the links of the Internet, you probably won’t get too far into The Big Shaggy either, because the fast, effortless prose of blogging (and journalism) lacks the heft to get you deep below.

But over the centuries, there have been rare and strange people who possessed the skill of taking the upheavals of thought that emanate from The Big Shaggy and representing them in the form of story, music, myth, painting, liturgy, architecture, sculpture, landscape and speech. These men and women developed languages that help us understand these yearnings and also educate and mold them. They left rich veins of emotional knowledge that are the subjects of the humanities.

It’s probably dangerous to enter exclusively into this realm and risk being caught in a cloister, removed from the market and its accountability. But doesn’t it make sense to spend some time in the company of these languages — learning to feel different emotions, rehearsing different passions, experiencing different sacred rituals and learning to see in different ways?

Few of us are hewers of wood. We navigate social environments. If you’re dumb about The Big Shaggy, you’ll probably get eaten by it.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 8, 2010, on page A27 of the New York edition.

The Center for Jewish Law and Judaic Studies (JLJS) at DePaul University College of Law hosted a conference May 13 to compare and contrast the fundamental conceptual underpinnings of the founding principles of the American Republic with those of Judaism.

The conference attracted scholars from leading universities from around the world.

“Founding a Nation/Constituting a People was the first major law school conference designed to explore the relationships between the fundamental values of America’s founding fathers and the foundational values of Judaism,” said Professor Steven Resnicoff, JLJS co-director. “The symposium brought together world class Jewish and secular scholars in law, political science, economics, and philosophy to examine these issues and to inspire further scholarship in this extremely important area.”

The conference featured three panel discussions on Fundamentals of Governance; Fundamentals of Economic Rights and Arrangements; and Fundamentals of Individual Rights, Liberties and Responsibilities.

“I started this inquiry because I wanted to discover whether there was some connection between America’s founding principles and Biblical Judaic law. As a result of this conference…I am convinced that there is a solid connection,” said Jack Miller, founder and chairman of the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History. “They go hand in hand. In fact, I believe that the teachings in the Torah contain many of the concepts that inspired our founders as they crafted our wonderful founding documents.”

The conference concluded with a public summary of the panel discussions by Professor Resnicoff followed by the keynote lecture, Nation Building, Ancient and Modern: The Biblical Model for the American Experience, by Prof. Dov Zakheim, a former United States Undersecretary of Defense and a prominent Jewish scholar.

Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, JUF Judaic Scholar, made the “shidduch” between the Miller Center and JLJS. The conference was supported by the Jack Miller Center. The Miller Center’s support was funded by a $75,000 gift from a leading Chicago philanthropic foundation that wishes to remain anonymous. DePaul is one of the nation’s leading Catholic universities.

Jack Miller

More than 50 representatives from several Chicago area colleges, universities, public and private schools, and foundations participated in a civic education roundtable on May 13 in Chicago.  The conference was hosted by The Jack Miller Center and the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago.

Marjorie Rendell, the first lady of Pennsylvania and a judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, was the featured speaker. Judge Rendell is one of the nation’s

Judge Rendell

leading advocates for civic education. She was introduced by her good friend, Diane Wood, a judge on the United States Circuit Court, Seventh District.  Judge Rendell’s remarks were focused on the question, “Does Civic Education Matter?” and were followed by panel discussions addressing the need to strengthen civic education at the middle school and high school levels, as well as at the college level.

“The need to improve education in America’s founding principles and history is gaining momentum as numerous studies in recent years have documented that students are graduating high school and even college with little knowledge about America’s heritage,” said Mike Ratliff, president of the Jack Miller Center. “This is a serious issue, one that should concern all of us who value the importance of education in preparing students to be good citizens, involved in the democratic process from the local level to the national level.”

www.northeasternpsa.com

2010 Annual Meeting

11-13 November 2010

Boston, Massachusetts

Conference Hotel:  Omni Parker House, 60 School St., Boston, MA 02108  (www.omnihotels.com)

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION

The 42nd Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association (NPSA) will be held at the Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston, on Nov. 11-13, 2010. Proposals for papers, panels, or roundtable discussions, and to serve as a chair and/or discussant must be submitted by June 15, 2010 via the NPSA submission website (e-mail submissions will not be accepted):

http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/npsa/npsa10/

(Once on the submission website, create a username and password and follow the instructions.)

Only one paper submission per person will be accepted. A paper presenter may also serve as a chair or discussant on a second panel or as a round-table participant. Questions should be directed to the Section Chair or the Program Chair (see below). Additional information about the conference is available on the NPSA website.

PROGRAM CHAIR

Eric N. Budd

Fitchburg State College

Phone: 978 665-3732

ebudd@fsc.edu

POLITICAL THEORY

ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

All aspects of Ancient (Greek, Roman) and Medieval (Jewish, Christian, Islamic) Political Thought

Dustin A. Gish

Department of Political Science

College of the Holy Cross

307 Fenwick Hall, Worcester, MA 01610

Phone:  508-793-3519

dgish@holycross.edu

ANNOUNCEMENT:

The 2010 annual meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association (NPSA) will be held in Boston, MA, this November 11-13. Please see the “Call for Proposals” for papers and full panels within the “Ancient and Medieval Political Philosophy” section. Proposals must be submitted on-line through the NPSA submission website. The deadline for submissions to be posted on-line is June 15.

Boston 1772

At the 2009 Annual Meeting, the “Ancient and Medieval Political Philosophy” section was (for a second year in a row) the largest at the conference, with 24 panels, 80 papers and presentations, and nearly 100 panel participants overall. Your participation, as well as your assistance in encouraging colleagues and graduate students to attend, is essential to our future success.

Best Regards,
Dustin Gish

Department of Political Science

College of the Holy Cross

307 Fenwick Hall,

Worcester, MA 01610

Phone:  508-793-3519

Fax: 508-793-3945

dgish@holycross.edu

The Jack Miller Center Chairman’s Award for Best Dissertation in American Political Thought is given to young scholars in Political Science whose dissertation represents a unique contribution to the study of American Political Thought, and whose scholarly work meets with the highest standards of the profession.

• The Award is given annually at the national meeting of the American Political Science Association, and carries with it a cash prize of $500.
• The deadline for nominations is July 1st.  Nominations for the prize should be submitted to Dr. Michael Andrews, Vice President for Academic Programs, The Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History, and should include both a hard copy and an electronic file of the abstract and introduction of the dissertation.  The nominating faculty member must be a member of the candidate’s dissertation committee, or a scholar familiar with the candidate’s work.  One letter of recommendation from a member of the candidate’s dissertation committee is required.  Dr. Andrews can be reached at mandrews@gojmc.org.
• Nominations will be evaluated by Miller Center staff, members of the Miller Center Academic Council, and an outside committee of scholars who will assess the dissertation according to the excellence of its subject matter, scholarly merit, and the originality of its contribution to the study of American political thought.

By Michael McDonald and John Lauerman

(Bloomberg) — An Internal Revenue Service survey, which led to audits of Harvard University and more than 30 other colleges, shows that the wealthiest schools should spend more of their endowments, according to U.S. Senator Charles Grassley.

The IRS survey found that 344 institutions had an average spending target of 4.7 percent to 5 percent of their endowments each year on operations. The agency canvassed a cross-section of private nonprofit and public U.S. colleges and universities, including 159 with fewer than 5,000 students each and 91 with more than 15,000, according to an interim report released last week.

Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he’s concerned that 5 percent has become a “ceiling” for colleges and that wealthier institutions should be spending more. The finance committee held hearings in 2007 on rising tuition costs and growing endowments at colleges including Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, prompting the institutions to provide more financial aid.

Investment Recovery

Colleges are recovering from record investment losses. The median foundation and endowment fund gained 32.2 percent in the year ended March 10, according to the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service. University funds lost on average 19 percent in the year ended June 30, the biggest drop in 35 years, according to the National Association of College & University Business Officers, based in Washington, and Commonfund, an investment manager in Wilton, Connecticut.

Some colleges expect to make higher payouts this year because the value of their endowments fell faster than officials cut contributions to their operations. Harvard, the wealthiest university, said in September that it will spend 6 percent of the fund in the current fiscal year, the most in 40 years and “well in excess of our targeted range” of 5 percent to 5.5 percent. The university had $26 billion under management on June 30, down from $36.9 billion a year earlier.

Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman said in a letter in September that the Ivy League institution in Princeton, New Jersey, also anticipates a payout of 6 percent, which is “outside the band,” even as it cuts the amount of money it uses for operations from its $12.6 billion fund, the fourth-largest in the U.S. and Canada.

Yale Raises Target

Yale increased its target payout to 5.25 percent in 2004, from 5 percent, and last year spent $1.15 billion of its endowment to subsidize operations, accounting for 43 percent of its budget, according to Yale’s website. Tom Conroy, a spokesman, declined to comment on the 2010 payout.

Forcing universities to spend more of their endowments would discourage diversified investing and push them toward more conservative portfolios, said James K. Hasson Jr., a lawyer at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan in Atlanta, who represents tax- exempt institutions.

“A mandate would remove flexibility and creativity from the tools available to colleges,” Hasson said. “There doesn’t seem to be a crying need for a legal mandate.”

The IRS mailed 400 questionnaires to nonprofit colleges and universities in October 2008, seeking data on endowments, compensation and income from businesses unrelated to their missions of teaching and research. It picked more than 30 institutions to audit on the basis of answers and is reviewing an additional 13 that failed to respond, the agency said.

Questionnaire Responses

The IRS said in the interim report that it “expects that the information learned from the questionnaire responses and examinations will identify issues and areas that warrant additional guidance and further scrutiny.” The agency previously conducted a similar review of nonprofit hospitals.

Harvard said earlier this year it was being audited as a result of the survey, as did Suffolk University in Boston, the University of Texas in Austin, Texas A & M University in College Station, and Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

The audit “isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” said Larry Acker, a spokesman for Lamar.

“I liken it to a fire inspection,” Acker said in a telephone interview. “They want to go in and make sure everything’s operating well in case of a fire. We’re pretty confident about the things we’re doing.”

Attention to Governance

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS commissioner of tax-exempt and government entities, said last month that the agency will be giving more attention to board governance of tax-exempt institutions that fail to file required IRS documents.

“How you go about building good governance around that is incredibly important to us and to your donors,” Ingram said at a conference sponsored by Georgetown University in Washington last month. “It will be part of all the audits that we do and all the studies that we do.”

The IRS is also concerned that nonprofits are failing to pay taxes on revenue from operations unrelated to their tax- exempt missions. Nanette Downing, director of exempt organization examinations, said last month in Washington that as much as 60 percent of institutions that filed a form for unrelated business income reported no income or a loss.

The agency collected $280 million of unrelated business income taxes from 5,700 religious, educational, charitable, scientific and literary organizations in 2006, according to its most recent data. The nonprofits had gross unrelated business income of $6.5 billion that year, according to the data.

“Why are charities willing to sustain these losses?” Downing asked at a panel at the Georgetown University-sponsored conference. “And why are so many charities reporting zero income or a loss?”

–With assistance from Oliver Staley and Janet Lorin in New York. Editors: Jerry Hart, Pete Young

To contact the reporters on this story: Michael McDonald in Boston at mmcdonald10@bloomberg.net; John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net.