Welcome Nathan Harden
Joining us on Ricochet as Guest Contributor this week is Nathan Harden, author of the just-released Sex & God at Yale: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad, published by St. Martin's.
I met Nathan a few years ago through the Phillips Foundation journalism fellowship program. A past recipient myself, I was serving as a judge for the program. When Harden presented his project idea about the higher education bubble to us, we were sold on it -- and him -- immediately.
Harden is a thoughtful commentator on higher education and has written for National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, The New York Post, and The Washington Times. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, and he blogs about higher ed for National Review Online. Nathan graduated with a B.A. in Humanities from Yale in May of 2009.
His book was named an Editor's Choice in the New York Times Book Review yesterday (you can read the review from Hanna Rosin -- yes, she recently praised hook-up culture -- here), and was featured on the cover of the Review. The book seems to be angering all the right people.
Please join me in welcoming Nathan Harden to Ricochet!
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Sexual freedom (or license) is a very poor substitute for real freedom. You'd think that Yalies would be smart enough to figure that out, but I guess they're not thinking with their brains that much.
May '10
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Welcome, Mr. Harden! We look forward to your posts.
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Good day, Ricochet-ers. And thanks Mollie for the kind intro. I'm excited to be here all week. I hear the conversation is a bit more elevated here than it tends to be elsewhere online. (See the comment board on any review of my book for examples of "elsewhere.") I look forward to some intelligent conversation!
Just want to point out a couple other bio points/links before we get going. I'm editor of a higher-ed news and commentary site called The College Fix, founded by National Review's beloved John J. Miller. If you like, you can check out my regular blog, The Hardwire. Also you can find me in the usual places--Twitter, Facebook, www.nathanharden.com, and, yes, even on iTunes, where I work out my inner Bono. (Yes, by the way, it's okay to make fun of my politics-clashing hairstyle.)
Let's get Ricochet-ing.
Edited on September 3, 2012 at 5:14pmJun '11
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Mr. Harden sheds a little light and truth on Yale
-- something they used to think was important -- and is excoriated for doing so.
The Left destroys everything it touches.
Nov '11
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
oops. wrong thread!
Edited on September 3, 2012 at 6:13pmOct '11
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Welcome, Nathan. I look forward to reading your book. As graduates of big-name colleges with starved core curricula (Dartmouth and Stanford), my wife and I frequently wonder where we can in good conscience send our daughters to college. Leaving aside the horrific expense, few colleges are actually peddling anything we feel inclined to buy. It seems there are two general options for parents: engagement with a hope of reversal (for instance, Peter Robinson and the Powerlineblog guys sending their kids to Dartmouth) or divestment (University of Dallas, Hillsdale, or any of the institutions singled out for praise at http://www.whatwilltheylearn.com/).
My impression is that political correctness has reached its peak -- and that higher ed, much like the Fourth Revolution in politics and government, might (might) be on the brink of a long-overdue realignment. What do you think is going to happen next? I know things have only declined since God and Man at Yale ...
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Hi Ranger: It's a dilemma. I've seen students with good values who arrived at Yale and were shining lights in a dark place. But I saw many others who got swept away by the political and moral groupthink. Instinctively, I tend to go for engagement. But if I were talking about my own son or daughter... I guess I'd want to feel very confident in his or her level of maturity and self-confidence before sending her off to have her mind assaulted by the radical left for 4 years. And it would depend on what he/she wanted to study. For political theory, a place like Dallas or Claremont McKenna is intellectually much richer, for instance.
Oct '11
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Good advice, Nathan. I have the same inclination toward engagement, and I think my kids will have more resources than I did to resist the debonair nihilism we’ve referred to in previous Ricochet threads. It would be easier overall if colleges had real rather than superficial diversity. I felt I had to worship Baal to get my receipt (diploma). But I was also weak in my principles at the time, too.
My other concern is that sending a morally grounded, intellectually curious child to a place like Yale could actually stunt their discovery of their vocation. Are our top colleges going to continue eroding their foundations in western civilization? Is there a point where more conservative families should stop granting brand-name schools the prestige they no longer seem to deserve?
Jun '12
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Mollie, thank you for introducing us to Nathan Harden.
Nathan: I am so anxious to read your book. I was blown away by your post about Porn as Brain Poison. The problem of porn is the loudest silent conversation of my lifetime. It is ubiquitous and doing horrible damage right before our eyes. It's in every single household, church, office, laptop and smart phone in America. This is not even up for grabs.
The only question now is what to do about it. And that is what I like so much about the video. It's all about the science, people. The information throughout the video is communicated with just the right touch, and gives people a way to talk about the problem sans piety and sans moral judgement.
I also think the conversation must be driven by men, and the video indicates that is beginning to happen. Great news! Now we can all help to push it out there and keep it going.
The single most chilling statement in the video is that scientists ‘could not find a control group...’
Sep '12
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
I'm reading Sex and God at Yale right now and I can't tell you how discouraged it has made me about Yale and our country in general. The disconnect between what is supposedly a high-level institution of learning and the utter degradation to which students are subjected at this vulnerable time in their lives in mind-boggling. My best hope is that the book will serve as an expose leading to much needed change.
I wonder, though, once people have abandoned themselves to the kind of thinking that has allowed this disaster to occur, how can it be rolled back? How can people be brought to understand how demeaning the culture they inhabit is? How can they come to understand the binding power of sex in a family and, wrongly used, how fragile that power is? I am pretty certain that many students have doubts about what is going on, but how can these doubts be given voice? Well--maybe they just have.
Aug '10
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Mollie,
You're doing an amazing job here. First posting by Harden is at 282 comments !
Bet you're going to get a big raise .....
Re: Welcome Nathan Harden
Sally and Merina,
Thanks for your comments. I think we all need to be aware that porn is training up and entire generation of young men (and young women). It's telling us that women should enjoy being debased. Amazingly, the left, which loves to tout itself as a force for empowering women, is largely behind the porn industry, which means they are supporting the message that women should eagerly assume subservient sexual identities, and be willingly humiliated, and that that's what sex is all about. Unfortunately, many young women are internalizing that message, right along with young men. No doubt this will affect many lives and relationships for the worse in the future.