Welcome to the American Story. This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

This story is one in a series about an immigrant boy who became my good friend

and holds a special place in the history of the

Claremont Institute.

He was born American but in the wrong place.

I call this one a little academe.

Classes at San Fernando Valley State College in the late 60s and 70s,

like classes at other colleges and

universities, mostly reflected the conventional academic prejudices of the

time, and so they were mostly an impediment to learning.

Left to their own device and so they were mostly an impediment to learning.

Left to their own devices, most of Peter's professors were capable only of deepening the crisis of man.

Peter understood this instinctively, but in a sense it didn't matter for him.

In almost every class, he would find another serious student, make a friend, and read good

books together outside of class, however the professor might be wasting or abusing the class's time inside.

This is an eternal possibility, even for students in our stale and oppressive universities today,

and this is how Peter and I became friends.

It was another sign of Peter's wonderful innocence that he had only the vaguest idea what

graduate school was, and had never contemplated it as something that for him might come after

undergraduate school.

He did have a couple of good friends in PhD programs down the road in a place called

Clermont, and we had visited them out there. But he had never imagined himself doing such a thing.

...