Ben Sasse

What does great history look like?

Why is it that almost all the history books that show up on a New York Times bestseller list are written by people that are not practicing historians in academic departments?

Because they want to write identity politics, narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow questions that aren't ever going to be read by people.

And you really want to ask questions about why does a generally educated American adult, citizen, neighbor write

voter, lover, need to read history.

What is the point of learning history?

You're not going to hear that argument in most history departments right now.

And so what you'd like to see is great history, great literature, great love for music and the arts, etc.

And those things are not being done in universities right now.

By and large, let's build better liberal arts colleges at the center of these institutions.

Well, I'll give you an example.

When we at Hamilton, when I got there, I think Hamilton had so many, I mean, thousands of applicants.

And lots of them were Ivy League liberals, professors who taught in, you know, the most prestigious universities in big departments.

And they would quietly reach out like, you know, something scandalous.

Do you think I would be considered if I applied for a job at Hamilton?

And they had the idea that had been repeated by some lazy media that Hamilton was a conservative project.

Hamilton wasn't a conservative project.

If you love Shakespeare, does that make you a conservative?

There's no ideological litmus test for hiring for anybody in any of those disciplines.

Fair, but I think the 101 question is, what is the best use of 45 months of an 18 to 22 year olds time?