Adrian College Freligh Series speaker to share thoughts on ‘The University We Need’

ADRIAN — Adrian College’s annual Jean Lok Freligh Community Lecture Series makes its return for 2023 with a program scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, in Downs Hall on the Adrian College campus.

Warren Treadgold, a National Endowment for the Humanities professor of Byzantine studies and a professor of history at Saint Louis University, will be the featured speaker, a news release from Adrian College said. The Freligh Speaker Series event is open to the public and is offered at no cost.

The annual lecture series at AC honors Bob and Jean Lok Freligh, longtime supporters and friends of Adrian College. An anonymous donation to honor the Frelighs was made in 2013 and has brought many nationally and internationally known speakers to the college since then, the release said.

Educated at Harvard, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1970 and his Ph.D. in 1977, Treadgold taught at UCLA, Stanford, University of California Berkeley, Hillsdale College and Florida International University and has held research fellowships at the University of Munich, the Free University of Berlin, All Souls College at Oxford and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

He has published more than 60 articles and 11 books, including the 2018 book “The University We Need: Reforming American Higher Education,” which will serve as the basis of his talk during Wednesday's lecture. The book’s description, the news release said, opens with, “Though many people know that American universities now offer an inadequate and incoherent education from a leftist viewpoint that excludes moderate and conservative ideas, few people understand how much this matters, how it happened, how bad it is, or what can be done about it. In ‘The University We Need,’ Professor Warren Treadgold shows the crucial role of universities in American culture and politics, the causes of their decline in administrative bloat and inept academic hiring, the effects of the decline on teaching and research, and some possible ways of reversing the downward trend.”

Treadgold has also published essays in Commentary, The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The Washington Examiner, The Independent Review, Athenaeum Review, The Wilson Quarterly and Academic Questions.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Adrian College hosts annual Freligh Community Lecture Series Wednesday