The ‘Suicide’ of the Liberal Arts

‘Mr. John, are you an Athenian or a Spartan?” A group of Iraqi students put that question to John Agresto in 2003, when he was in Baghdad working to rebuild Iraq’s university system for the Coalition Provisional Authority. After a classroom discussion of Thucydides, he says, “I thought I knew what they were driving at. So I said, ‘I hope I’m an Athenian, cultured and sophisticated. I don’t want to be a Spartan, rough and warlike.’ ”