Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

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associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay. You can support our podcast by

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Welcome to the Colette Podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay.

I first met Anthony Cronman 25 years ago in 1994.

Professor Cronman at the time was just beginning his decade long run. 1994. year class. In an environment where students and even some professors dressed in a

highly informal style that might charitably be called scholastic sheik, Dean

Kronman often stood out for the distinguished way he presented himself.

During my three years in New Haven, I regarded him as the ultimate embodiment of the elite Ivy League law school establishment.

But under that suave veneer, Dean Cronman, who is now Sterling Professor Yale Law School,

apparently has become something of an Ivy League rebel, or at least what passes for one in 2019.

In his new book, The Assault on American Excellence,

Professor Kronman offers a sustained critique of university culture.

What's more, he warns that the mistakes being made on campus

may have serious repercussions not only for students, but for democracy as a whole.

At the heart of Professor Cronman's critique, which he develops through classic works by such

luminaries as founding father John Adams, is the idea that halls of great learning, like our political system,

require some kind of hierarchy as a means to identify truth and virtue.

...