John Crowe Ransom lecturing at UCLA 4/22/1963

[@jfbusa123]

Some comments in this stream refer to Ransom’s political views as so objectionable as to be a bar to his speaking on any campus today. I am not sure what views are here being referred to. Ransom was a supporters, with certain reservations, of the New Deal, and a critic of capitalism and its gospel of unlimited material progress - to be achieved at whatever cost to the environment, to existing communities, to mores and traditions. These views might in fact find welcome on today’s campuses. I agree that his manner of speaking, with its precise discriminations of meaning and its leisurely pace, might baffle his audience or make it impatient - but then so would almost any other speaker from the time before attention the attention spans of most members of the public contracted to almost nothing. His thinking on social and political issues was a blend of conservatism and radicalism that was too individual to be classifiable in today’s glib terminology. Kieran Quinlan’s excellent study « The Secular Faith of John Crowe Ransom » is probably the best treatment of all this. And Ransom was, personally, kind, charitable, and altruistic.

[@ZephaniahL]

His ideas about race, what else these days? Not that it was an obsession or even a major preoccupation of his, so far as I know. Unlike with those who would spit on him today.

[@helleborusorientalis7007]

In his essay ""Reconstructed but Unregenerate" he wrote, "Slavery was a feature monstrous enough in theory, but, more often than not, humane in practice; and it is impossible to believe that its abolition alone could have effected any great revolution in society." That statement in itself would effect immediate cancellation.

[@MrKlemps]

As of February of 2018, it seems wholly miraculous that in 1963 John Crowe Ransom was able to speak at, and was honored by, UCLA. I suspect that today, he would be barred from this campus--or indeed nearly ANY campus--on account of the political views he held earlier in his life. This fact, of course, is emblematic of the tragic downturn of American education and of the nation in the nation as a whole. One could add, as well, that even if JCR were allowed to speak, nobody on this or most other campuses would these days understand or, of course, care about, the first thing of what he was talking about. Anyone who speaks of "progress" in higher education is either delusional, dishonest, or stupid.

[@Dreadandcircuses]

Delusion, dishonesty, stupidity: These all follow politicization like day follows night. We might also accurately describe the products of such a higher education system as radical, vicious, ignorant, and vindictive. If he had been born in 1988 instead of 1888, quite apart from any of his individual political beliefs, the pedagogy and literary interests alone of someone like JCR would completely preclude him from academic careers altogether, and probably would prevent him even earning a Ph. D.

[@tejasnair3399]

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