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Campus argument and the young right
The folding table, the microphone, and the queue of students waiting to disagree. What Kirk built on American campuses, why the format spread, and what it is good and bad at.
New this term. Reviews from students and parents appear here once families have taken it.
A media and movement-history course about a figure most of our students have already watched on a screen. The point is to move them from watching to analyzing: what the open-microphone format does well, what it cannot do, and why it travels so far online.
Students study the format as a made thing. They read supporters and critics, including conservatives who argue the campus confrontation model rewards the wrong skills, and they are required to state the strongest version of each side.
The course closes with students running the format themselves, which is the fastest way to learn what it costs. Standing at the table is harder than it looks, and so is sitting in the chair.
Every meeting of this class stands on its own. Nothing in week six assumes week five, so a student can join in the middle, take the four weeks that fit around a busy month, and stop when they want to. There is no catching up to do, because there is nothing to be behind on.
That is also why there is no grade here and no such thing as an incomplete. The record keeps what actually happened: the meetings attended live and the recordings watched. A student who came to three meetings has a record of three meetings, not a failure.
Week 1
Turning Point USA, the campus tour, and an argument staged in public on purpose.
Week 2
Anatomy of an exchange: the opening question, the reframe, the clip. Why it is built to be short.
Week 3
Social platforms, the economics of the clip, and what a medium rewards whoever is using it.
Week 4
The case against the format, read directly, including conservative writers who argue it trains performance rather than persuasion.
Week 5
Students run the format on a question of their own, then swap and take the chair. Recorded and reviewed together.
Week 6
A graded five-minute verdict on what the format is good for and where it fails, defended with evidence.
Clip & transcript packet
Odysseus Lyceum
Full exchanges rather than excerpts, with the surrounding context restored. Supplied at no cost.
Readings for and against
Various
Short essays from supporters and from critics on both the left and the right.
Sympathetic to the project of arguing in public and unsentimental about the format. A student cannot pass this course by admiring the subject, and cannot pass it by dismissing him either. Both verdicts require evidence.
Read our academic philosophyMeetings are recorded and released to enrolled families for fourteen days. Recordings capture the instructor and shared materials; student video is not published.
Full refund up to seven days before the first meeting; inside seven days, everything paid is credited to your Lyceum balance. No refunds or credits once the class has begun. Cancel any section from your parent account.
These describe how this instructor has been trained, reviewed with educators and accessibility specialists. They are not a diagnosis and not a marketing claim.
Students and parents review separately, on different questions, and the two aggregates are never blended. Every review is verified and moderated.
No parent reviews for this class yet.
Reviews from students are published as “Student, age 13”, never with a full name. Photo and short video reviews are supported and moderated before they appear.
Conservative Thought
Burke to Kirk
The first course in the Lyceum’s core sequence: what conservatism has actually claimed, from Burke’s Reflections to Kirk’s canon, critics included.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$10/wk
$70 in total
$28 for add’l siblings
Great Books
The year-long seminar · Ages 15–18
A full year inside Tocqueville: both volumes, forty pages a week, discussed live every Tuesday with twelve other students.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$56 in total
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Conservative Thought
Argument, media, and contemporary conservatism
His intellectual influences, his arguments, his media career, his strengths, his critics, and his place in the conservatism of the last decade.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$48 in total
$19.20 for add’l siblings
