Academic Offerings
The tradition lives here. Encounter the Permanent Things.
For more than fifty years, students and scholars have gathered in Mecosta, Michigan for seminars in the Russell Kirk Library, where they can pursue humanistic studies and experience the hospitality of his family’s home. These immersive seminars—led by some of the finest teachers and thinkers of our time—invite participants to explore the riches of our cultural inheritance and discover how they may be conserved and renewed.
Thousands have come to Mecosta and joined a living conservative tradition rooted in what Russell Kirk called the Permanent Things: those enduring moral norms and truths that sustain a free and humane order.
The Russell Kirk Center’s School of Conservative Studies now extends this experience through in-person and online courses, as well as academic credentials designed for today’s learners.
You may register or apply for the offerings below. To stay informed about upcoming courses and programs, subscribe to our monthly e-letter and biannual newsletter, Permanent Things.
Opening Conference for the School of Conservative Studies
On June 27 – 28, 2025, we organized an academic conference that brought together scholars from across the United States and Europe to address the prospects for Anglo-American intellectual conservatism through the prism of Russell Kirk and Roger Scruton—and the traditions of thought they represent. It marked a special launch for the new School of Conservative Studies at the Russell Kirk Center. Watch these panels and presentations on our YouTube channel.
Seminars, Master Classes, and Lectures
Register or Apply
Knights, Heroes, and Patriots: Howard Pyle and the Shaping of the American Moral Imagination
About your Instructor:Dr. David P. Deavel (Ph.D., Fordham) is an associate professor and chairman of the department of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A senior contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and a Contributing...
Traditional Conservatism and Classical Liberalism (Section 2)
Meet the Instructors:Luke C. Sheahan is associate professor of political science at Duquesne University, a senior affiliate in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of Pennsylvania, editor of The University...
Traditional Conservatism and Classical Liberalism (Section 1)
Meet the Instructors:Luke C. Sheahan is associate professor of political science at Duquesne University, a senior affiliate in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of Pennsylvania, editor of The University...
Russell Kirk and the Conservative Mind
Dr. Michael P. Federici is a Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center. He is also Professor and former Chair of the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), where he currently serves as Faculty Senate...
The Perennial Edmund Burke
Gregory Collins, Ph.D.Lecturer in the Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics and Department of Political Science at Yale University Time: Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 pm ETDates: March 3, 11, 17, 24Faculty: Dr. Gregory CollinsLocation: OnlineTuition:...
The Moral Imagination of Jane Austen
Leta Sundet, Ph.D.Assistant Professor of English at Hillsdale College Time: Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 pm ETDates: November 25; December 2, 9, and 16Faculty: Dr. Leta Sundet Location: OnlineTuition: $100 (free for students, teachers, and professors)...
The Roots of American Order as the Foundation for a New Fusionism
David D. Corey, Ph.D. Professor of Political Science in the Honors Program & Director, Baylor in Washington (Baylor University) Bradley J. Birzer, Ph.D. Professor of History & Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies (Hillsdale College)...
The Conservative as Artist: Flannery O’Connor and the Ethical Life
Michael P. Federici, Ph.D.Professor and former Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Middle Tennessee State University Time: Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 pm ETDates: September 9, 16, 23, and 30Faculty: Dr. Michael P....
An Evening with Christopher Dawson: Introducing a Historian of Culture
Dr. Joseph Stuart, Ph.D.Director of History & Fellow in Catholic Studies at the University of Mary Time: 7:00 – 8:00 PM ETDate: September 2, 2025Faculty: Dr. Joseph Stuart Description: Please join us at 7:00 p.m. on September 2, 2025, for...
Certificate in Conservative Studies
Coming Soon
Conservative Thought from Burke to Eliot
Class Time:Dates:Credits: Faculty: DescriptionThis course traces the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, providing special attention to the ideas and importance of Edmund Burke. Emerging from Burke’s response to the French...
Conservative Thought in America After World War II
Class Time:Dates:Credits: Faculty: DescriptionThis course examines the conservative intellectual tradition in America from 1945 to the present. It explores the American conservative renaissance and the foremost writers and thinkers who contributed to it....
The Historical Roots of American Order
Class Time:Dates:Credits: Faculty: DescriptionThis course explores the historical roots of the American tradition and considers how the American Revolution did not represent a radical break from Western civilization. It traces the origins of the American...
Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
Class Time:Dates:Credits: Faculty: DescriptionThis course explores the roots of the great Right-Left political divide that emerged as part of an eighteenth-century debate between two formidable intellectual figures, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. This was...
The Moral Imagination in Literature and the Arts
Class Time:Dates:Credits: Faculty: DescriptionFirst used in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, the term “moral imagination” is an essential concept in modern conservative thought. This phrase, which originated with Burke, was later...
Seminar at Piety Hill for Certificate Students
Class Time: Dates: Faculty: DescriptionFor more than fifty years, thousands of students and dozens of distinguished lecturers have participated in Seminars at Piety Hill, the ancestral home of Russell Kirk. Importantly, these seminars provide for...
Will the moral and social order that Americans have known for two centuries and more endure throughout the twenty-first century? That may depend upon whether enough men and women in these United States, informed by the study of the institutions and convictions that have been developed over three thousand years, make up their minds to stand by the Permanent Things.