Welcome to the website of the Russell Kirk Center.
We hope that visitors to this site will be inspired to discover more about the life and thought of Russell Kirk and about the work of the Center that carries forward his legacy today. Russell believed deeply that civilization can only thrive when there is, in the words of Edmund Burke, a partnership of “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.”
Russell saw his mission as conveying to America’s rising generations an understanding of the process by which a healthy culture is transmitted from age to age. Today, this mission is continued in the work of the Russell Kirk Center, which promotes, through its publications, seminars, and fellowships, an appreciation of the “permanent things” that maintain and nurture our civil social order.
You will find on this website information about Russell’s life and writings and about the various projects that we administer here at the Center. There are links that will enable you to find and purchase books by Russell Kirk, access the Center’s publications, and learn more about our academic programs.
If you would like to support us in our work of intellectual and cultural renewal, please contact us for information on how to make a donation to the Center.
Sincerely,
Annette Y. Kirk
About the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
- Location: Mecosta, Michigan, the family home of Russell Kirk. The Center complex includes Dr. Kirk’s library and several residential houses.
- Status: Nonprofit educational institute.
- Mission: To strengthen the foundations—cultural, economic, and religious—of Western civilization and the American experience within it.
- Focus: Kirk Center programs and publications 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.
- Audience: Students and scholars, leaders in business and the professions, policy makers, and the general public. We identify, educate, and mentor thoughtful men and women, and develop and promote the writing of both established and emerging thinkers.
- Partnerships: We work with people and groups worldwide that are committed to revitalizing our common cultural inheritance.
- Programs: An unrivaled program of seminars and unique facilities for the support of undergraduate, graduate, and senior residential fellowships.
- Publications: In addition to supporting the publication of the works of Russell Kirk, our publications include The University Bookman (America’s oldest conservative review of books), Permanent Things (our newsletter), and Studies in Burke and His Time (a scholarly journal).
