AustLit

'Russell Kirk, the twentieth century’s great man of letters, who had the distinction of being the only American ever awarded the Doctor of Letters degree by St Andrew’s University, wrote a weekly column for the conservative journal National Review called “The Ivory Tower”. The column focused on the affairs of the Academy: outstanding academics, books, and all manner of conflict and scandal that perpetually bedevil universities. Dr Kirk kept the column going for twenty-five years, discontinuing it around the turn of the ‘Eighties, having become known as the foremost commentator on academic affairs from among those who stood by what Barry Spurr called “the Old Idea of a University”. 1 Following Cardinal Newman, Professor Spurr defended the academy as the home of those who “embrace the heterodoxy of human knowledge unhampered by considerations of practical application or societal constraints”. This, too, was where Dr Kirk felt most at home, but undoubtedly any disciple of the Old Idea who paid such careful attention to the state of the academy between 1955 and 1980 would have found it increasingly difficult to write with any optimism about academia’s future. Yet Dr Kirk, an independent scholar throughout his career, was fortunate enough not to depend on the universities for his daily bread. So he withdrew to his home in Mecosta, Michigan, and championed high culture and liberal education from the battlefield of his choosing. The National Review’s founding editor, William F. Buckley, Jr. recalled him resigning his post, saying simply, “I think I’ve done this for long enough”.' (Introduction)