Welcome Home to the Russell Kirk Center
Strengthening America’s Tradition of Order, Justice & Freedom
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal aims to recover, conserve, and enliven those enduring norms and principles that Russell Kirk (1918–1994) called the Permanent Things. Explore the Center’s programs, publications, and fellowships and join with us to continue Kirk’s work to renew our culture and redeem our time.
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At the Kirk Center
Highlights
2024 in Review: A Banner Year for the Kirk Center
Our most recent Classic Kirk Essay on the enduring significance of Irving Babbitt
A look at the 2024 Richard D. McLellan Prizes Gala.
Video recording of “Adapting The Conservative Mind for the Current Generation” panel discussion in Washington, D.C.
Events
February 4 – 25, 2025. Virtual Course on Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
March 13-16, 2025. Panel on “Building Places of Intellectual Community” at the Ciceronian Society
On Campus
Explore Kirk On Campus
Russell Kirk understood his work was to convey to America’s rising generations an understanding of the process by which a healthy culture is transmitted from age to age.
We’re continuing this important work through Kirk on Campus as we host conversations about the permanent things on campuses across Michigan. We hope you’ll join us at an event, and help us prepare tomorrow’s leaders with an appreciation of the richness of the conservative intellectual tradition.
From the University Bookman
Buckley at 100: Revisiting the Speeches of William F. Buckley Jr.
“…I asked William F. Buckley Jr. which of his books was the favorite… Since I did not have a game plan other than to say ‘hello,’ speaking with him was an unexpected opportunity to pop the question. ‘It has to be the book of my speeches,’ he answered. ‘It covers fifty years of my life. No other of my books does that.’”
Latest Pieces
Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Like the Early Modern period, our own age is a time of charlatanry and real evil…”
The Real Way to Build Back Better
“If twenty-first-century America, as divided and rancorous as she has been in generations, is to find authentic peace and prosperity, her citizens must look inside their hearts rather than out at the government for a path to renewal. Self-reform is the only way to build society back better, and the Christian religion has long served as its greatest catalyst… Thomas Griffin offers us a model for reform: the way of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was so suffused with love for Jesus Christ that he was able to renew his world.”
The Original Struggle Between Globalism and America First
“…what could be more timely than an account of the first national ‘America First’ campaign? And who should provide this accounting but historian H. W. Brands whose long string of solid books brands him as one of our most important and most prolific chroniclers?”
Proverbs, Virtues, and Callings
“This is at the heart of Melanchthon’s teaching on virtue in his commentary on Proverbs. We must ‘not undertake anything without our vocation constraining us,’ but within these vocations we must find the specific virtues that will adorn them and make our efforts useful.”
Cabrini: The Humble Saint Behind the Film
“Cabrini, the nun who would become a saint, dedicated her life to helping good people in practical ways… Her letters, carefully collected… showed the love that motivated her kindness.”
About the Bookman
For six decades, the University Bookman, founded by Russell Kirk, has identified and discussed those books that diagnose the modern age and support the renewal of culture and the common good. Currently published online, the Bookman continues its mission of examining our times in light of the Permanent Things that make us human.
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