The Economist: “Delighted” by Visit to Thomas Aquinas College

A correspondent from The Economist offers the following account of his recent visit to Thomas Aquinas College, California, in the magazine’s newly published review of Christopher Scalia’s Thirteen Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven’t Read):

On a rainy summer’s morning, eight students and a professor sat around a table at Thomas Aquinas College, a Catholic institution north-west of Los Angeles. They were formally dressed—the men wore ties—and they addressed each other as “Mr” and “Ms”. For hours the group debated “The Bear”, William Faulkner’s tale of a young hunter disillusioned with mankind’s efforts to subdue the land and its creatures. The scene would have delighted anyone who despairs that university students do not, will not and cannot read.

The discussion would have pleased right-leaning Americans in particular, and not just because Thomas Aquinas has America’s most conservative student body. For this was not a conversation about identity politics dressed up as literary theory: instead, students kept close to the text of the story and talked of fear, courage, goodness and other virtues.

If you would also delight to learn more about a college where students do, will, and can read — and who study and discuss the great works in pursuit of wisdom, not ideological succor — then, you, too, may want to pay a visit to Thomas Aquinas College.