Kors Warns of Academic Betrayal of Liberty

Alan Charles Kors, coauthor with civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate of the 1998 book The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, gave a public talk on campus last semester, "The Betrayal of Liberty and Dignity on America's Campuses." Kors's book was called by Harvard's Alan Dershowitz "an eye-opening and well-documented exposé about what could happen to your children when they are sent to even the best colleges in the country."

A professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania since 1968, Kors has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of 17th- and 18th-century Europe and is editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. He was confirmed by the United States Senate in 1992 to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, and he has served on the executive board of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the board of governors of the Historical Society.

Kors has been elected four times by his colleagues at Penn to university and school committees on aca demic freedom and responsibility. In 1993 he defended Penn student Eden Jacobowitz in the "water buffalo" case. He has received the Lindback Foundation Award and the Ira Abrams Memorial Award for distinguished college teaching as well as numerous awards for his defense of academic freedom.

Kors's talk was cosponsored by the Ithaca College Republicans, the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Office of Student Affairs and Campus Life in conjunction with the Young America's Foundation.