REMEMBERING RICHARD MITCHELL. From Virginia Postrel comes news of the passing of Underground Grammarian, Richard Mitchell. Alas. Here was a man who, years ago, noted, and wrote well about, the institutional rot, much of it self-inflicted, in the University. Many years ago, before "diversity" became the latest management fad, Mitchell argued that University was the opposite of diversity, particularly if University hoped to be anything other than an indoctrination center or some kind of training ground. I'm paraphrasing. Mitchell put it much better. My copy of his essay will no doubt turn up in my study immediately after I log off.

UPDATE: It's online, in a 1988 essay called "The Curriculum from Hell," bringing in inter alia Dante, and the sentence reads, "And that’s what a university is, if it is a university, and not a jumped-up trade school, or a conditioning station for docile citizens, or a pulpit of ideology. It is a place devoted to the study and preservation and nurture of whatever human wisdom can be found that pertains to everybody who lives, or has lived, or ever will live, on Earth."