91����

A correspondent from The Economist offers the following account of his recent visit to 91����, California, in the magazine’s of Christopher Scalia’s Thirteen Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven’t Read):

On a rainy summer’s morning, eight students and a professor sat around a table at 91����, a Catholic institution north-west of Los Angeles. They were formally dressed—the men wore ties—and they addressed each other as “Mr” and “Ms”. For hours the group debated “The Bear”, William Faulkner’s tale of a young hunter disillusioned with mankind’s efforts to subdue the land and its creatures. The scene would have delighted anyone who despairs that university students do not, will not and .

The discussion would have pleased right-leaning Americans in particular, and not just because Thomas Aquinas has America’s most conservative student body. For this was not a conversation about identity politics dressed up as literary theory: instead, students kept close to the text of the story and talked of fear, courage, goodness and other virtues.

If you would also delight to learn more about a college where students — and who study and discuss the great works in pursuit of wisdom, not ideological succor — then, you, too, may want to pay a visit to 91����.