From 2004, Milt talks with CBS’ Bob Schieffer about his book Face the Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-Winning News Broadcast.

Something has gone profoundly wrong in  American higher education. It is visible at the top – that is, at the leading universities – and, as usual, it then tends to filter down to the more standard institutions.  Yale University gave me my first academic job (Assistant Professor of Psychology) many years ago and, since then, I have often heard from former colleagues about disorder and decline in its “sacred halls.”

Nathan Harden, a frequent contributor to Ricochet and recent graduate of Yale, has done a  book telling the sad story and trying to search out its causes. Here’s our recent discussion about how hedonism and mindlessness have undermined tradition and intellectual seriousness at one (and not the only one) of our great educational strongholds.

Harry Stein, former liberal and now aggrieved conservative (it happens a lot in New York) has run all the risks in his book of last year, now retitled Why We Won’t Talk Honestly About Race. Honesty begins, he asserts, with the full recognition and examination of the two separate Black  Americas.  In this conversation he holds forth on the various “let’s pretends” that help to perpetuate the dysfunctional world to which “inner city” young blacks have been consigned. Among the great pretenses are: fathers don’t matter; crime has nothing to do with race; multiculturalism makes for better education. Yes, to be sure,  Stein risks being defamed as “politically incorrect.” But someone has to do it and no other we know does it with as much clarity, verve and restorative good humor.

There are about three conservative cartoonists fully employed by American daily newspapers. How do we know that? Because one of them told us so. That is Scott Stantis of the Chicago Tribune and here he is discussing the cartoonist’s art and what’s wrong (and sometimes right) in American politics.

That’s the title of the recent Broadside book by Sally Pipes, President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute. Here she is showing how Obamacare will add tremendously to the costs for individuals and employers. But, she argues, there are easily implemented alternatives…and here they are.