This week’s speaker in the Chautauqua Lecture series at Eastern Kentucky University says he’s concerned about the state of liberal education in the U.S.
Dr. Michael Roth is President of Wesleyan University in Connecticut and author of “Why Liberal Education Matters.”
Roth believes education is the key to making Americans stronger, better-informed citizens. He says, "Without becoming stronger citizens, we get hoodwinked by a bunch of charlatans who are trying to show us that they can cut the budget in such a way as to protect the wealthiest people in the country but not have to demand certain changes that would allow for greater democracy or less inequality."
Acknowledging he’s no expert on Kentucky politics, Roth said it’s clear the state has what he called “an economic mess caused by years of fiscal mismanagement.”
He says cutting funding for higher education is a matter of robbing the future to pay for mistakes of the past.
Thursday's’s Chautauqua lecture was the last in the 2015-16 series of talks on the EKU campus.
