Hoisted from Comments: Hilzoy on What Is Missing from Donald Kagan's Padded Cell
And another thing...
[Donald Kagan wrote:]
The study of Western civilization, which dominated American education after World War II, has long been under attack, and is increasingly hard to find in our schools and colleges.
Really? "Hard to find"? In my philosophy department alone, we're teaching five courses in some aspect of the history of western civilization. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that most history departments teach some European/N. American history, politics departments teach some European/N. American government, and I'm pretty sure departments like Romance Languages and German and English cover the odd snippet of Western culture. I even manage to teach courses like Enlightenment Moral and Political Theory without being hunted down by whoever it is that Prof. Kagan thinks is trying to force me to spend all my time denigrating it.
If Kagan can't manage to locate courses in Western civ at Yale -- a college where they have regularly scheduled courses in Old Church Slavonic, for heaven's sake -- the only possible explanation is that they don't teach them in his padded cell.
(On the other hand, back in 1977-81, when I was at Princeton, I remember looking for a decent introduction to Indian history and/or culture, and coming up empty. A whole subcontinent seemed to have gone missing from the curriculum.)
