The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational institute based in Mecosta, Michigan, home of the American writer and thinker Russell Kirk (1918–1994).

Russell Kirk at his deskContinuing in the tradition of Dr. Kirk, the Center’s mission is to strengthen the foundations—cultural, economic, and religious—of Western civilization and the American experience within it. Its programs and publications have a particular focus on moral imagination and right reason. They celebrate and defend the “permanent things”—all that makes human life worth living, particularly the bedrock principles that have traditionally supported and maintained the health of society’s central institutions: family, church, and school.

The Center’s efforts are directed at students, business and religious leaders, policy makers, and the general public. It identifies, educates, and mentors thoughtful men and women, and develops and promotes the writing of both established and emerging thinkers.

The Center also seeks to further these aims through cooperation with people and groups worldwide that are committed to revitalizing our common cultural inheritance.

The University BookmanTo these ends the Center offers an unrivaled program of seminars and unique facilities for the support of undergraduate, graduate, and senior residential fellowships. It also has its own list of publications, which includes America’s oldest conservative quarterly review of books, The University Bookman.

We are grateful for your interest in the Russell Kirk Center and invite you to learn more about our mission and projects.

Imagination it is that shapes society—moral imagination, or idyllic imagination, or diabolic imagination.

Russell Kirk

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News and Events

Colson on Kirk

We were pleased to note Chuck Colson referencing Russell Kirk so warmly, and correctly noting Dr. Kirk’s rejection of ideology, in a commentary from June 6, 2008 titled “True Conservatism.”

Jul 2008

Defending the Conversation

In the newest of the Bookman‘s web-only content, James Seaton reviews Anthony Kronman’s stirring defense of a traditional liberal-arts education. Click here for the review!

Jun 2008

Kirk on Eliot

A new edition of Dr. Kirk’s acclaimed literary biography, Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century is being published in July 2008 by ISI Books.

Jun 2008

Eliot Conference

The Kirk Center is co-sponsoring a conference on T. S. Eliot on August 14–16, 2008 in conjunction with the new edition of Dr. Kirk’s book, Eliot and His Age. See the conference page for details.

May 2008

Healy Interview

The Bookman has just posted an interview with Gene Healy, author of the new book, The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.

May 2008

New Bookman

University BookmanThe new Spring issue of the University Bookman is out and the full contents are posted on our site. The issue is devoted to the art of biography with reviews of new books on Ralph Adams Cram (by Dan McCarthy), Orestes Brownson, conservative luminary Gerhart Niemeyer, and others. Subscribe here.

Apr 2008