One Table, Many Voices

Great Books Education: Two Millennia of Corrupting the Youth and Challenging Authority

A Lecture by Roosevelt Montás

Funded by the Carol J. Worrell Series on Literature

St. John’s College will host author and academic Roosevelt Montás on both campuses to discuss the power of the great books across time and cultures—and why they have resonance for a new generation. The lectures will also be livestreamed for the broader St. John’s College community to attend virtually.

ALUMNI, PARENTS, DONORS & FRIENDS:

Save the date and join us via livestream!

April 1 at 7 p.m. MT
Livestream from Santa Fe

April 15 at 8 p.m. ET
Livestream from Annapolis

STUDENTS, STAFF, AND FACULTY:

Save the date and join us on your home campus!

April 1 at 7 p.m. MT
Santa Fe | Great Hall

April 15 at 8 p.m. ET
Annapolis | Great Hall

For Montás, the great books have been a liberating force. At the age of 11, he left a rural town in the Dominican Republic and arrived in New York, where he attended public schools in Queens. After a chance encounter with Socrates, he went on to study at Columbia University through its Opportunity Programs and would later lead Columbia College’s Center for the Core Curriculum (2008-18). Montás will share how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on his own life and will drive home the power and relevancy of liberal education, especially to members of historically underrepresented communities. 

Currently, Montás is the director of Columbia University’s Freedom and Citizenship Program, which brings low-income high school students to the Columbia campus to study political theory; the program also helps them prepare successful applications to the college. In addition, Montás is a senior lecturer at the university’s Center for American Studies and the author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press). He is the author of multiple articles including “Why the Core Matters for a New Generation,” “Classic Books or Diverse Books?,” “Finding Dignity and Excellence in the Great Books,” and “Democracy’s Disappearance.”

In his book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, Montás mentions St. John’s and the important role that the college plays in liberal education: “Among big research universities, the Core model survives in programs like Yale’s Directed Studies, Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education program, and the University of Chicago’s Core Curriculum. St. John’s College, in Annapolis and Santa Fe, has carried the logic of the Core to its maximum application, organizing its entire undergraduate program around the common reading and discussion of original texts.”

 

This lecture is funded by the Carol J. Worrell Series on Literature and is part of the college’s One Table, Many Voices series of programs, which invites scholars and thinkers from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints to join the conversation on ideas presented in the great books that remain deeply relevant to us today.