The Power Line 100: Peter Schramm

It’s long past time to get to Peter Schramm’s place (not to say ranking, which we don’t have anyway) on the Power Line 100 Best Professors in America roster.  Schramm, born in Hungary, emigrated to the United States in the aftermath of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 because, his father told him at the time, “We were born American–just in the wrong place.”  You can read his account of the story here.

Next month Peter will step down as the director of the Ashbrook Center after 25 years, but will remain on the Ashland University faculty, which is a great thing for students.  We caught up with him for a wide-ranging conversation last week about trends in higher education and what makes for good classroom teaching.  Here in this first six-minute installment, he describes how he uses Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus to get freshmen thinking about the fundamentals of politics.  We’ll have more installments in the coming days.  (And by the way, nearly all of the Ashland history and government faculty deserve to be on this list, as Peter has helped build a terrific department.  I’ll have to figure out some kind of group listing for Moser, Sikkenga, Schwartz, Burkett, Lyons, Foster and the rest.  They’re like the ’27 Yankees of liberal arts faculties.)

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