Let’s Change the World

**BIG ANNOUNCEMENT**

I know I’m supposed to be taking a brief vacation from The Redneck Intellectual, but I have a HUGE announcement today that I’d like to share with all of you.

Let me begin, though, with some background.

During the 2004-2005 academic year, I was a visiting professor at Princeton University through the James Madison Program (on leave from Ashland University). I had several attractive job offers on the table that year, including one from Brown University where I did my Ph.D. and other offers from American University, Marshall University, and Clemson University. I was also negotiating positions with Princeton and Notre Dame.

In the weeks leading up to decision day, I struggled to make up my mind on which offer to accept. The night before I had to make the final decision, I was still uncertain about where I should relaunch my career. As I was tossing and turning, my wife said in her inimitiable way: “Stop it! You’re being an idiot. The choice is obvious: you have to go to Clemson.” I was surprised and asked her why. (I apologize in advance for any appearance of self-promotion, but I’m just reporting her words.) She said: “You’re a change the world kind of guy, and Clemson is your chance to change the world.” I guess she appealed to my vanity, but the second she said those words, I knew she was right, and the decision was made. Clemson it was!

There was a certain degree of risk in accepting the Clemson offer. The Clemson job was to start some kind of center or institute on the moral foundations of capitalism. I accepted a limited-term position with no prospect of tenure, gave up my position as a tenured full professor, and I had to raise my own salary (as well as those of future employees), which I’ve done for the last 19 years. I moved to Clemson ahead of my wife and three young children and lived in a dormitory for the first five months. In my absence, my wife was a single mother in Ohio homeschooling our three children.

By December of 2005, we had created the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism (CISC) with a major start up grant from BB&T (then one of America’s largest banking and financial services companies) and its visionary CEO John Allison.

The mission of the Clemson Institute is, has been, and always will be to explore the moral foundations of a free society. To that end, the CISC runs one of Clemson’s best attended lecture series (i.e., the John W. Pope Lecture Series) and for over ten years the CISC ran summer conferences for professors and college students.

Most importantly, the CISC created and runs one of the most prestigious academic programs in the United States, the Lyceum Program, which uses a Great Books approach to the studying the history of liberty, capitalism, the American Founding, and the principles of moral character. The Lyceum Scholars Program offers four-year scholarships to incoming freshman. (We currently have 52 Lyceum Scholars.)

In exchange for the scholarship, each Lyceum Scholar takes eight classes over four years, which include:

1. Freshman Year: 1) Wisdom of the Ancients; and 2) Introduction to Political Theory

2. Sophomore Year: 1) American Political Thought; and 2) Political Theory of Capitalism

3. Junior Year: 1) Modern Political Thought; and 2) Political Thought of the American Founding

4. Senior Year: 1) Constitutional Law; and 2) Wisdom of the Moderns

In addition to these eight courses, each Lyceum Scholar is assigned what we call a Socratic Tutor (i.e., a Lyceum Faculty member), who meets with his or her tutees individually every other week for about an hour. The purpose of these meetings is twofold: first, to help our students translate the ideas they’re learning in their Lyceum classes to their lives here, now, today; and second, to help our young men and women think seriously and deeply about questions of moral character—and their moral character in particular.

The program has been a stunning success. Applications are going through the roof. In just the last three years, our Lyceum graduates have included: one Rhodes Scholar; two winners of a Fulbright Scholarship; students at Harvard and University of Chicago Law Schools; two federal court clerkships; one upcoming clerkship on the Supreme Court of the United States; 13 students doing Master’s degrees at institutions such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Yale; five students in Ph.D. programs; and one of our early graduates has started a tenure-track professorship at Ole Miss.

Because of popular student demand at Clemson, we also now run the Lyceum Fellows Program, which is open to all Clemson students. We currently have 150 students in the Fellows Program.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that Clemson University—from the Board of Trustees to the President and the Provost—has been a remarkably supportive home to the Clemson Institute. I doubt that Clemson Institute, given its mission and values, could exist on any other college campus in America.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.

I am honored and humbled today to announce that the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism has received a gift of $25 million from David and Lynette Snow from Darien, Connecticut. David Snow has been on the institute’s Advisory Board for the last ten years. The Snow gift was announced publicly last Saturday at the Clemson v. Virginia football game. Here I am with the Snow Family during the announcement:

And with this gift, I am pleased to announce that we’re having a name change. From this day forward, what was once the Clemson Institute will now forever be the SNOW INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF CAPITALISM. This transformational gift will permanently endow the Snow Institute, and it will allow us to significantly expand the Lyceum Program. In the next year, we will be doubling the number of students admitted into the Lyceum Program and we will be doubling the amount of the Lyceum Scholarship.

We also hope to launch a brand-new initiative that we’re calling the “American Founding Project.” I will have more to say about the “American Founding Project” in the future, but for now let me say this: our goal is to restore the study of the American Founding to its proper place in American higher education. Our goal is for Clemson University and the Snow Institute to become America’s leading institution for the study of the American Founding.

Lastly, I would like to express my profound thanks to Dave and Lynette Snow. Their principled and visionary gift to endow the Snow Institute is a profound expression of what Aristotle refers to in the Nicomachean Ethics as the twin virtues of liberality and magnificence. Of the virtue of liberality, Aristotle says:

Actions that accord with virtue are noble and for the sake of the noble.  The liberal person too, then, will give for the sake of the noble and correctly: he will give to whom he ought and as much and when he ought, and anything else that accompanies correct giving.

And of the virtue of magnificence, Aristotle says that it is how one uses one’s wealth rather than the simple possession of it that defines greatness: “the most valued work is the greatest and noble (for the contemplation of such work is wondrous, and what is magnificent is wondrous); and the virtue of a work, its magnificence, resides in its greatness.”

David and Lynette Snow have done something “magnificent” and “wondrous.” And the virtue and nobility of what they have done “resides” in its greatness.” The Snows have done something truly rare and great: they have put their wealth to work in support of the moral principles they hold most dear. They love the United States of America: they love freedom; and they love capitalism. Their gift supports and perpetuates the principles of a free society for all of us.

On behalf of the faculty, staff, and students of the old Clemson Institute, I’d like to thank David and Lynette Snow once again for their extraordinary gift. You have my word that we will work tirelessly to promote the ideals we all share.

Over the course of the last nineteen years, we have created something special and very good at the Clemson Institute, and now the Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism will create something great.

To borrow a famous line from Karl Marx, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Thank you for that, Mr. Marx; I think I’ll give it a shot! And just think, like a good Marxist studied in dialectical materialism, my wife predicted all of this 19 years ago!

As we say here up here in the hills leading to the Appalachian Mountains: Let’s get’er done!

I hope you’ll share this post with your friends and family. Let’s change the world together!