Literature Professors Ought to Concern Themselves with, you know, Literature

I thought of this statement when I read a quotation from Professor Adam Bradley who is rapidly becoming a go-to media authority on hip-hop and rap. I tend to find these sorts of things more than silly and downright dangerous to any school that pretends to have a literature department.

What's next? A professor of comic books or nursery rhymes?

But a liberal arts education ought to be concerned with the great, the magnificent, ways in which mankind seeks to perpetuate his own freedom. It ought not to be concerned with the trivial, say, like hip hop. But read this quotation anyways, if only to get a sense of how our college may be coming to be perceived.

"There is a growing sensibility that is recognizing that hip-hop is where poetry lives today in so many ways," said Adam Bradley, an assistant professor of African-American literature at Claremont McKenna College in California who is an editor of a coming anthology of rap lyrics for Yale University Press.

Bradley added that, for children, hip-hop is a natural way to learn the basics of poetry.

"The kinds of word games that children naturally create," he said, "mirror hip-hop in its most basic forms."

I couldn't have said it better. Rap is childish and the more common means of "grinding" would be more akin to animalistic than human. It's certainly conduct unbecoming of a gentleman.

For those seeking a real education in literature, I recommend Robert Faggen's course on Robert Frost. Never have I learned so much in so little time.

Jonah Goldberg Mentions Pomona Professor in Op-Ed for L.A. Times

Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, mentioned a Pomona professor, Susan McWilliams, in his column yesterday about what to call this decade.

It was during the oughts that Americans started drinking more bottled water than beer. As Susan McWilliams of Pomona College observes, you can tell something about a society that chooses clever water over humble beer. Bottled water is personal, inward driven. Beer is social, outward-driven. Beer gets the party started. Water is the thirst quencher of choice for the solitary fitness addict, marching to the beat of his or her own drummer, digitally remastered for the iPod.

I wonder if that's true for CMC students. Perhaps this observation only comes from watching Pomona students. I jest, but only slightly. Incidentally, McWilliams won $50,000 as a graduate student on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" I sure hope she didn't spend it all on beer or water.

In any event, while we're on the topic of Jonah Goldberg, I wrote a review of his book, Liberal Fascism, which you can read here and as we've noted before, Goldberg's quite the fan of the Claremont Review of Books, as you can see from this bloggingheads.tv diavlog.

Remembering Tom Silver, a Scholar and a Patriot

Today we remember one of the Claremont Institute’s finest scholars, Thomas B. Silver, who died seven years ago today. He was only 54.

His book, Coolidge and the Historians, resurrected the image of Calvin Coolidge for me and encouraged me to study him further. He rapidly became my favorite president. For those of you who cannot read Coolidge and the Historians, here are two reviews: Claremont McKenna's Charles Kesler, writing in National Review in 1984, and John J. Miller, writing in Reason Magazine in 1998.

I went to his library in Northampton, MA several months ago. I was deeply moved by Silent Cal’s persistent, composed work ethic, forever toiling to make alive the principles that make America grand.

Among the many great bits I found in Coolidge and the Historians, I found this speech from Coolidge, dated July 5, 1926, the 150^th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Coolidge said,

We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.

So, in memory of the man who rescued Coolidge so that others might study and appreciate him, I think it's time that we say "thank you" once more.

Here is a reprint of Silver’s January 8, 2002 Los Angeles Times obituary.

Thomas B. Silver, a scholar whose historical views guided his extensive work in local government and on behalf of a Claremont conservative think tank, died Dec. 26 at St. Jude's Hospital in Fullerton. He was 54.

Silver, a Fullerton resident, succumbed to an aggressive brain tumor that had been diagnosed only a few days earlier.

In a career that spanned academia and politics, Silver brought a penetrating intellect and a modest, even-tempered demeanor to his work, friends and colleagues said. He spent 16 years working for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, ultimately as chief of staff, and was deeply involved in such issues as welfare reform and developing mass-transit alternatives.

"Tom was one of the most intellectual and down-to-earth individuals I have known," Antonovich said. "He was a Renaissance man. He was an author; he ran the marathon; he had an understanding of finance, theology, political philosophy; and he was able to bring people together and find solutions."

Silver also served as an instructor at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont in 1977, and as a consultant-panelist and outside reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities in the early 1980s.

He was the author of a book, "Coolidge and the Historians" (1982), which challenged the standard view of America's 30th president. Silver argued that Calvin Coolidge was a great American statesman who adhered to the essential principles of government laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and stood firm against a rising liberal tide.

At the time of his death, Silver was working on a new book about the Progressive movement and what he saw as its corrosive effects on American politics and society.

But it was perhaps in his long association with the Claremont Institute, which he helped establish in 1979 and led as president for the past year and a half, that Silver most continually engaged with the issues dear to him. A center of passionate conservative scholarship, the institute supports research, writing, publishing and educational outreach on the moral and political principles embodied in the Declaration and the Constitution. With an annual budget of $4 million, the nonprofit institute has made itself a valued resource for conservative lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington.

Larry P. Arnn, Silver's predecessor as the institute's president, described Silver as "a quiet man, confident in his views, but capable of fierce argument with people, always civil."

In a Times story in March, Silver voiced the institute's mission. "We want to overthrow the reigning orthodoxy," he said, "and we want to, somewhere along the line, train a Franklin Roosevelt who will then overthrow the New Deal."

Born in Detroit and raised in Grand Rapids, Mich., Silver received his bachelor's degree in political science from Kalamazoo College. He studied at the Claremont Graduate School, where he earned a doctorate in government. He is survived by his wife, Nancy, and two sons, Arthur and Salvador Antonio.