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.
Sign up to receive our semiannual newsletter, Permanent Things.
At the Kirk Center
Highlights
New Book: Russell Kirk’s On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776
John Engler named as Chairman of the Kirk Center’s Board
Classic Kirk essay: On the Constitution: “A Revolution Not Made, But Prevented”
Visiting Scholar Daniel Pitt discusses Disraeli and the Conservative Tradition
Events
September 15, 22, 29: Russell Kirk on America Virtual Master Class — Apply Here
September 26: Public Conference in Grand Rapids — Reclaiming Authentic Conservatism: Russell Kirk and the Roots of American Order
Available now from Creed & Culture
Mecosta House Books
Explore Mecosta House
At Mecosta House, we aim to combine with the Kirk Center’s programs to foster an intellectual community dedicated to exploring the wisdom of our predecessors while forging a new conservative humanism.
We hope our readers will be edified by the titles we publish, and that they will strengthen the programs and the courses we will introduce at the Kirk Center as part of our School of Conservative Studies. David Hein’s Teaching the Virtues offers a fresh look at a perennial educational aim—encouraging virtue in the next generation, and we are proud to present it as our first book.
From the University Bookman
“To Think Faith” as Educators
“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”
Latest Pieces
Every Educational Bureaucracy is Unhappy in Its Own Way
“In the end, Nikias’s story illustrates a recurring truth about bureaucracies: reformers often find themselves defeated not by external enemies but by the accumulated habits, incentives, and procedures of the organizations they serve.”
The Problems of American Higher Education
“In the spirit of Kirk, the conservative reformer must remember the imperfectability of human nature, a moral truth that the modern academy has forgotten.”
Techne and Themis in History
“The book explains what Western/European civilization is by telling the story of its birth, formation, evolution, and global influence. It ends with McDougall’s statement that from the perspective of the current times, ‘”Western civilization,” however defined, has become decadent, and is perhaps even dying.’”
Winston Churchill’s Path to Leadership
“He wrote of a vanished empire, of bygone comportment associated with society balls and faraway battlefields, and of a governing class that suddenly found themselves among the governed. As astonished as Churchill was at the pace of change during his lifetime, I think modern readers can perfectly relate to this sentiment. The pace of change has not diminished. Nor has the relatability of a young Winston Churchill.”
John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist
“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”
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.
Subscribe for all Bookman Reviews and Essays