Bringing Liberal Education to Tbilisi

Bringing Liberal Education to Tbilisi

My name is Steve Lenzner. I am a Harvard Ph.D. seeking to raise funds to allow me to move to Tbilisi to teach the great books of philosophy and literature at Ilia State University (iliauni.edu.ge), one of the Republic of Georgia's two finest universities. The Rector has invited me as a visiting lecturer for five years in its liberal education program, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057332115351&mibextid=ZbWKwL, but it is still in a post-Covid financial crisis and cannot pay another salary right away. So I am aiming to raise $70,000 which would allow me to move to Tbilisi and teach for three years, after which we hope the University can take it up. I want to begin teaching in the forthcoming spring semester.

Ilia State University’s liberal education major is introduced by a required lecture course all arts and sciences students take.Teaching in the major is organized by an NGO, the American-Georgian Initiative for Liberal Education (AGILE). AGILE also organizes a civic education program, Youth for Democracy, supported by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (ned.org, https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-search.php?organizationName=AGILE). (Unfortunately, NED cannot fund salaries at public institutions.) The liberal education major and the civic education effort work together to channel the best students, who learn from great books what freedom is, into the activities of democratic citizenship.

Former Soviet Georgia —having suffered under Soviet tyranny—longs for true liberalism, which entails both political liberty and intellectual freedom. The latter is under assault in US universities, but far less so in countries that suffered the depredations of communism. Teaching there will foster true freedom of thought in a society that hungers for it.

Georgia, an ancient kingdom with a tradition of independence and cultural greatness, endured Russian attacks in 1992-93 and 2008, and the Ukraine war has made clear Putin’s refusal to recognize the end of the Soviet Union. The country seems to be at a historic turning point. Its three million people are again threatened with foreign domination and spiritual insignificance, but are once again rebelling against those threats. Such peoples and places--the ancient Jews, Renaissance Florence, the 16th-century Scots who gave birth to capitalism, etc.--have been sources of historic innovation. Perhaps the Georgians can develop in this way.

The University has agreed to provide me with a privilege I've never encountered before: the freedom to teach four courses of my choosing each year. Such courses would include surveys of the history of political philosophy, seminars on the works of Leo Strauss (to whom I've dedicated my scholarly work) and classes treating great novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Gulliver's Travels, as well as film and political philosophy (of which my Youtube lecture provides a taste).

I am confident that this is a worthwhile project that would not only be good for me, but also good for the cause of liberal education. If you agree, please support this undertaking. Thank you.

Lenzner and William Kristol: "What was Leo Strauss up to?": https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/what-was-leo-strauss-up-to

Leo Strauss, "Liberal Education and Mass Democracy: https://www.ditext.com/strauss/lib2.html