College Governor Tom Krause Gives ALL for Liberal Learning

A recent story in National Review Online highlights the contributions of a new organization that is championing the cause of liberal education, the Alliance for Liberal Learning, whose director, Dr. Thomas R. Krause, is a member of the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors. The Alliance, writes author David Clemens, seeks to “rally some humanist troops to the defense of the Western liberal tradition.”

The Alliance — or ALL, as it is known — consists of some 30 educational institutions, including Thomas Aquinas College, as well as nonprofits and businesses that “provide liberal learning opportunities for students and adults.” Its mission is to “promote and support conversations about great works and ideas” and to “open the public imagination to the enduring value of lifelong liberal learning, which prepares us to live freely and well.”

Dr. Krause is a longtime devotee of liberal education, dating back to the decision of his daughter Christel (Kelsey ‘91) to attend the College in 1987. Shortly thereafter he joined the College’s President’s Council, and then attended its Great Books Summer Seminar Weekends. “It was those early seminars that really got us interested; it was having the actual experience of reading and discussing those books,” Dr. Krause has observed. His appetite for liberal learning whetted, he went on to earn a master’s degree in liberal arts at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Today he is a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors at St. John’s, a member of the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors, and founding president of the Agora Foundation, which offers great books seminars in Ojai, California.

Dr. Krause has now gathered all these organizations together, as well as many others, in ALL. The Alliance held its first annual conference last November, and it is currently planning for its second conference, to be held in Chicago on October 28-29.