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
Join us on Friday, June 27, and Saturday, June 28, 2025. This conference brings together scholars from around the globe and across the United States to address the prospects for the Anglo-American intellectual conservative tradition through the prism of Russell Kirk and Roger Scruton—and the traditions of thought they represent. It will mark the official launch of the new School of Conservative Studies at the Russell Kirk Center. Learn more and register here.
Seminars, Master Classes, and Lectures
Register or Apply
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...
The American Political Novel
Dr. David Hein, Ph.D.Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center Dates: July 24-27, 2025Faculty: Dr. David HeinLocation: The Russell Kirk Center Description:This is a new immersive seminar that explores the connection between politics,...
Russell Kirk and the Conservative Disposition (Section 2)
Dr. Ryan Streeter, Ph.D.Executive Director of the Civitas Institute Dr. Lee Trepanier, Ph.D.Dean of D'Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University Date: July 22, 2025Faculty: Dr. Ryan Streeter, Dr. Lee TrepanierLocation:...
Russell Kirk and the Conservative Disposition (Section 1)
Dr. Jeff Polet, Ph.D.Director of the Ford Leadership Forum at the Gerald R. Ford Mr. Michael MaibachDistinguished Fellow for Save Our States Mr. Michael LuccheseFounder and CEO of Pipe Creek ConsultingAssociate Editor of Law and...
The Perennial Edmund Burke
Dr. Ian Crowe, Ph.D.Director of the Edmund Burke Society of AmericaAssociate Professor at Belmont Abbey College Dr. Gregory Collins, Ph.D.Lecturer in the Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics and Department of Political Science at Yale University...
Russell Kirk’s 10 Conservative Principles
Dr. Jason Jewell, Ph.D.Chief Academic Officer and Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives of the State University System of Florida Time: 7:00 - 8:00 PM ETDate: October 22, 2024Faculty: Dr. Jason Jewell Description: Russell Kirk authored thirty-two books...
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...
Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, and the Moral Imagination
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.