CLEMSON, S.C. – Socialists, communists and progressives need not apply.

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Clemson University in South Carolina next school year is going to launch the Lyceum Scholars Academic Program. It is the first and only university-based academic program that will be dedicated to moral, political and economic foundations of a free society. It’s a breath of fresh, academic air.

Program founder Dr. C. Bradley Thompson, the executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, says he has thought about this program for the last five years.

“I wanted to create something that was, in a sense, lost in American higher education … I think that young people have a thirst for this kind of knowledge.”

Clemson has been very supportive over the last nine years for both the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and now for our Lyceum program, he said. He’s had no opposition from the faculty, administrators or even students. He says they’ve had nothing but support and the program has “sailed through from day-one.”

The program has drawn its inspiration from the Lyceum School founded by Aristotle in 335 BC. Program organizers have created a philosophically oriented and intellectually integrated program that presents students with a philosophic community based on a classical form of education patterned after Socrates’ apprenticeship model. The program will place all Lyceum freshmen in a small learning community of from five to 10 students and a faculty “Socratic tutor” who will closely monitor and guide their intellectual development for their entire four-year education.

Thompson says the Socratic tutor’s role is not to discuss abstract ideas that the students will be learning in class but to help them translate theories and ideas into practice and, more particularly, how to think more seriously and deeply about the issue of moral character.

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And if that’s not enough, each Lyceum Scholar will be eligible for a scholarship worth up to $10,000. The plan is to give 10 scholarships to incoming freshman when the program launches next year, renewable over their four years. Once the program is up and running over four years, there will be 40 Lyceum scholars at any given time.

Each year a small group of students will be selected to participate. Those interested in becoming Lyceum scholars should apply in their senior year of high school. Thompson says they’re looking for the best and the brightest. So students will, in addition to applying to Clemson, fill out a separate application for the Lyceum program. There will also be a couple of short essays they’ll have to answer.

If accepted, all students will take an 8-course sequence with at least one Lyceum course each semester. The first year is an Introduction to Political Philosophy and Wisdom of the Ancients. During the sophomore year, students will study Political Thought of the American Founding and American Political Thought, in their junior year Structures of Government and Rights and Liberties. In their senior year Capstone Course: Freedom Philosophy and Capstone Course: Political Theory of Capitalism.

“We’re trying to recapture the long-lost tradition in this country where, prior to the Civil War, every Ivy League president taught a capstone course in moral theory. We’re trying to recapture an older type of education that you saw in this country 100, 150 years ago.”

Some of the required reading includes Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Marx (that’s right), Rand and Milton Friedman’s’ Capitalism and Freedom.’ Students will also study ‘The Declaration of Independence,’ ‘The Constitution’ and ‘The Federalist Papers’…things they’re not likely to find much of in the schools their currently attending.

The promotional literature says:

At the end of this unique course of study, students will graduate with a robust training in the intellectual skills of being rational, independent, serious and honest thinkers, articulate speakers and eloquent writers. Additionally, students will be thoroughly familiar with the essential ideas that form the foundation of free institutions thus preparing them to move into careers in law, academia, policy making and the business world.

Thompson says the response has been overwhelming. It has been greater than he anticipated. High school students and their parents from all over the country have contacted the school about the program once they began promoting Lyceum about two months ago nationwide. A couple of applications have already been submitted even thought the deadline isn’t for a couple of months.

“The ideal candidate for the Lyceum program will not only be academically and intellectually a high-flier, but will also be students who are genuinely passionate about ideas,” he said.

For more information or to apply, visit www.Clemson.edu/Capitalism/Lyceum or contact: [email protected].

Thompson says they hope that other schools will also want to integrate similar programs at their schools.

“We would love to replicate this program at many colleges and universities around the United States.”