Education: Freedom Must Be Learned

"The destruction of the tradition of the liberal arts at this crisis in our history ... would be a crime comparable, in my opinion, with the burning of the books by the Nazis. . . . Burn your books—or, what amounts to the same thing, neglect your books—and you will lose freedom as surely as if you were to invite Hitler and his henchmen to rule over you."

If this defense of liberal education had come from a college president—as such defenses often have come—it might have been dismissed as the cry of a...