Remnant Review
My library will go to the Mises Institute. Let me explain why.
The Mises Institute has very bright summer interns: Ph.D. candidates working on their dissertations. It brings in scholars to assist them. But I hesitated. The Auburn University library is across the street, and it is a fine library. The Institute is not in the wilderness. Also, my library has a lot of history books in it. These are supplemental to the main task of the Mises Institute. Not many economists are gifted historians, the way Murray Rothbard was. He would have loved it.
I thought my books might be accessed by more students at a college, especially one in the boondocks, where students and faculty have no access to a research library. I had three in mind. But all three of them turned down my offer.
Most important, I thought my books would aid the work of faculty members. They have a major task: to conduct a war in the battle for ideas. This war is well understood by the humanists. It has been going on in the West for as long as there has been a West. The humanists have the state on their side: tax-funded education and state-enforced accreditation governing higher education: the right to call an institution a college or university.
The typical faculty member at a fundamentalist college faces a task rather like the task faced by the Israelites after the Pharaoh declared that they would be required to gather their own straw to make bricks. Faculty members must buy their own books. They get little help from librarians, because colleges spend most of the library budget on bricks and mortal, not books. When you hear the phrase "bricks without straw," think "libraries without books."
A tiny handful of families shell out $30,000 a year to send a child to a fundamentalist college. They deplete their retirement savings to do this. But they do not have a clear understanding of what their children are getting for the parents' money. They do not understand the following.
WHAT KIND OF COLLEGE?
Because my collection is heavily oriented towards history and social science, with a fairly substantial collection of theological materials, I had thought that it would be a good addition to the library of any of a number of Christian colleges.
Fundamentalist colleges are more conservative theologically and politically than neo-evangelical schools. Neo-evangelical schools teach the worldview of secular humanism with respect to social and economic theory. The best book on this was written over 20 years ago: James Davidson Hunter's Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. That generation is now here.
This begins at the high school level. The outlook of most graduates of evangelical Protestant high schools ($5,000 to $10,000 a year) is the same as that of public school graduates. This has been documented every year for 25 years by the PEERs test. Read about it here.
Most of the graduates then go to tax-funded universities. A few go to Christian colleges. Their parents spend in the range of $30,000 a year to fund this. To understand what these parents are paying for, consider these three stories.
There is a biblical story that it describes something similar. When Moses told Pharaoh to let God's people go, Pharaoh was enraged. He told the taskmasters that, from now on, the Israelites would not be supplied with straw for their brick-making.
When you think "bricks without straw," think of "libraries without books."
CASE #1
I approached a professor at a fundamentalist college. He has assigned my books to his students in the past. I told him about my intention of giving away my library. He has taught at two Christian colleges that have reputations as being far more conservative than the run-of-the-mill evangelical campus. He thought that my collection would be a good addition to his school's library.
His school's library has 65,000 volumes. This is the smallest college library that I have ever heard of. Normally, any college that does not have at least 100,000 volumes in its library is considered little more than a community college. A community college does not need a large library. It is training students with minimal background. It is not engaged in the battle of ideas. It is engaged in the battle for functional literacy. The dropout rate is probably above 50%.
I made a visit to the college. I spoke to the librarian. He sounded somewhat interested. I contacted him later about whether he wanted to go through with it, and he said he was still interested. He said he would come and see the library. The school is under three hours away. But, instead of coming, he sent two ladies who are on the library's staff. He has a Ph.D. in library science. They do not. He is the man in charge of the library. They are assistants.
I was not told when they were coming. They walked in unannounced. I was not there. They did not call me. I never met with them. They met with a person who had access to the building, so that he could show them where the library was stored. He showed them around. Fortunately, he has a Ph.D. He is familiar with the library.
About 90 minutes later, they told him this: "The library already has all of these books." I see. They went through 10,000 books. They knew. I have been cherry-picking these books for 50 years. I have never seen a private collection like it, other than my late father-in-law's legendary library.
In talking with them, he learned that their attitude is this: they do not like physical books, and they do not like physical journals. They told him that they would prefer to get rid of most books in the college's library. They prefer digital books. These take up no space.
Then why bother with a library building at all? Yet the college promotes its library as state-of-the-art. It has computers. It has new bricks and mortar. But it has very few physical books.
There is a problem with digital books. American copyright law says that any book published later than 1922 cannot be legally digitized without the permission of the heirs, if the author or his heirs renewed the copyright 28 years after its publication. This would eliminate all academic books published after 1922 that were important enough to have their copyrights renewed. But these ladies do not like physical books. Physical books are really bothersome. They require such things as cataloging. Who needs this bother?
They also said that my library is suitable for graduate students. Their school has no graduate students.
Let's see if I understand this. The school (1) already has all of my books, and (2) my library is for graduate students, so they don't need it.
They didn't mention this: the school has a faculty. Unlike major research universities, which have assembled gigantic collections mainly for the sake of their faculties, this college assembles the library only for the sake of undergraduate students, on the assumption that if a faculty member wants to get a book, he can order it, pay for it, and store it at his expense.
This is typical. Librarians are not involved in the battle of ideas. They simply shelve books. They help students check out books. Yet, operationally speaking, they act on behalf of the faculty.
If I had been the librarian, I would have come in person. The donation would have increased the size of the library's physical holdings by about 15%. I would have asked two members of the social science faculty to accompany me view the collection. They would have represented the social science faculty. They could have made a decision based on this: "What do we need to help us in our work?" I would have spoken and its needs, but not for the faculty.
So, the ladies said they were not interested. They made the decision that an additional 10,000, collected by a scholar in the field of social theory over a period of 50 years, was not in the interest of their students, who are not graduate students. Put differently, "our students are not too bright." My guess is that some of them are. These are the ones to target. They were saying: "These bright students are just not worth the shelf space."
This took them 90 minutes. It took me 50 years.
CASE #2
This was not the only case of a rejection. Another fundamentalist university, far more famous, previously had employed my faculty contact for over 20 years. It is quite large. But its library, compared to the number of students enrolled, is substandard.
The head of the history department understood the value of my library. He said that he would check with the president of the university to see if he thought it would be good idea to take my collection. I never heard from him again. Obviously, the president didn't want the books. I have known him for over 30 years. He is known as a conservative, but he is not known as a scholar.
This is the state of Christian education today, at least in Protestant fundamentalist circles.
One unaccredited school did say that it would like the collection, but since I had offered the school the collection over five years ago, and was curtly dismissed at the time, I decided that I would not cooperate. The librarian then informed me that it had no interest in such things as social science and the humanities. It was only interested in the theological section of my library. The new librarian had changed his mind, but it was too late.
CASE #3
I have known the librarian at the third college for 15 years. He wanted my library. But he has a problem: his library's shelves are filled. To buy a new book, he must toss out an old book. The college has no budget for library expansion.
My library is filled with books published before 2000. Space is not available.
HIGHER EDUCATION, SORT OF
People wonder why Protestant fundamentalism seems intellectually incapacitated. It is because the leaders of the movement do not understand that this is a battle of ideas. The leaders give lip service to the battle of ideas, but they do not explain what they have in mind, or what ideas they are offering as a substitute. They cannot point to a body of books and journals that spell out the details of this confrontation. "The battle of ideas" is a battle across the entire civilization. Fundamentalism's leaders are silent about the details of this battle for the minds of men in Western culture.
This battle must be fought with traditional tools. There are lots of new digital tools. This is a great advantage. But the fundamental tool of academic confrontation is the library, from the library at Alexandria to the library of Harvard University. Harvard is called Harvard because John Harvard donated 320 books in 1636.
A library provides those who are in the front lines of the intellectual battle with the ammunition they need to conduct an effective fight. The leaders of American fundamentalism do not want any fights outside the four walls of the church and the four walls of the family. Even with respect to the family, they are content to baptize the latest fad in psychology and counseling, and call it Christian. I have seen this for 50 years, and it has not changed.
These schools charge $30,000 a year to parents, who write the checks in order to give their children a baptized textbook-based education. The students are not being trained to confront the reigning orthodoxies of the Establishment. They are not informed of the nature of the battles in every academic discipline. The few faculty members who do understand what this fight is all about are isolated. They are not provided with the tools they need, beginning with a well-stocked, carefully selected library.
This has been true ever since Clarence Darrow humiliated William Jennings Bryan in the court of public opinion in the summer of 1925. Ever since the Scopes trial, there has been a steady retreat of Protestant fundamentalism from the battlefield of ideas.
Parents think they are doing their kids a favor by sending them off to these institutions. They should keep their children at home, get them enrolled in an online distance-learning program, and let them work part-time and McDonald's. A minimum-wage salary will enable them to earn an accredited college degree in probably three years or four the most, for a total expenditure under $15,000. The kids can pay for their own educations. Unfortunately, Christians think that the education their children will receive at these institutions of mediocre learning is going to be worth 100,000+ after-tax dollars.
THE TWO TESTS
If you want to test the academic commitment of some Christian college, look at the size of the library. If it is under 100,000, this indicates a lack of commitment on the part of the school's administration to equip its faculty. It means that the school is underfunded. It means that the faculty is engaged in the battle of ideas, if at all, with one hand tied behind its back.
If the school's library web page does not say how many printed volumes -- not digital collections -- are on the shelves, you can be sure that the librarian is suffering from a sense of embarrassment. He figures most parents will not ask. He is right. They won't.
Next, go to the bookstore at the beginning of the term, and take a look at the textbooks assigned. If the textbooks are standard, run-of-the-mill textbooks issued by New York publishing houses, there had better be a supplemental workbook or an online PDF that takes apart the textbook, line by line, from the point of view of a Christian worldview. Any institution of higher learning that assigns textbooks is doing the students no favors. Textbooks are the preferred tools of the American intellectual Establishment to screen out anyone who would challenge this Establishment. Textbooks are written by Establishment professors to be reviewed by a committee of professors, who will filter out anything that challenges the system.
Doubt me? Pick up any college economics textbook. Turn to the chapter on the Federal Reserve System. Does it follow the chapter on cartels? No. Does it explain fractional reserve banking as a way for the state-licensed central bank to re-distribute wealth? No. Murray Rothbard's book does: The Mystery of Banking. But no college assigns it.
Books. The two tests are based on books. But Christian parents are ignorant of these tests. So are conservative parents.
If physical books on shelves is seen as a liability by librarians, then the solution is 100% online education and distance learning. If you do not need physical books, you do not need physical classrooms, either. You do not need dorms. You do not need student unions. You do not need lawns, air conditioning, heating, and parking lots.
If you want to know whether a college is up to snuff, find out what its book purchasing budget is. I mean physical books. Of course, no one ever asks.
A college with a library that is filled with computers, but has few physical books, is the equivalent of a Potemkin village. It deceives those who do not know any better.
CONCLUSION
Harvard University's library has its own Wikipedia entry. Here, we read:
The Harvard Library system comprises about 73 libraries, with more than 18 million volumes. It is the oldest library system in the United States, the largest academic and the largest private library system in the world. Based on the number of volumes in the collection, it is the third largest library collection in the US, after the Library of Congress and Boston Public Library.
Harvard is serious academically.
Before you shell out $30,000 a year to send your child to a Christian college, find out how many physical books are in the library. That will give you a sense of how serious the college is about the war of ideas. That will tell you how serious the college's administration is about equipping its faculty for this battle.
Library web pages usually add digital materials to the holdings, in order to give the impression of being larger than they are. But research books are not digital. Copyright laws prevent this. The battle for ideas is conducted on the front lines by means of physical books on shelves. A faculty without physical books on shelves is greatly hampered in this battle.
Dedicated teaching can be done without a well-stocked college library. Dedicated research cannot be.
If the college's library is small -- under 200,000 physical volumes on its shelves -- the college is saying: "Our faculty doesn't read much. Our students don't read much. But this is a great place to find a marriage partner."
My suggestion: an online Christian dating service is a lot cheaper. So is a B.A. from a 100% online accredited college. How much cheaper? One semester 's Christian college fees will pay for the whole shebang: about $15,000. If the student starts passing CLEP exams in high school, he can earn the degree at age 18 -- 20 at the latest.
There are seven ways to skin the academic cat. Let me explain.
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