From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - The Life-Changing Power Of A Classical Education

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Throughout the years, Sean and Rachel have seen their children attend many Catholic schools and public universities that never felt like the right fit, but when one of their kids began attending the University of Dallas, they knew they found something special. The university prides itself on providing students with a classical education, while keeping Christ at the center.   Sean and Rachel are joined by University of Dallas President Jonathan Sanford to discuss the educational differences that set classical colleges apart from other public universities, how President Sanford has seen kids thrive both socially and academically in his ten years serving as President, and the life changing experience their daughter is having as a student at the university.   Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host of the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back at the kitchen table. And those who follow our podcast regularly know we talk a lot about classical education. We talk a lot about the kind of journey that we've taken as a family, sort of going from mediocre, lukewarm, milquetoast Catholic schools to finding them. From the University of Chicago to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But also the kids in the elementary school going through milquetoast Catholic schools

all the way in finding a Catholic school that we like. And then the journey, as you said, Sean, into the universities. And so we did Chicago, University of Chicago. We tried University of Wisconsin-Madison. We don't like that. And then we finally, on the third one, got it right. We got our daughter into the University of Dallas, which is a Catholic classical university. And we thought as much as we try

and describe it and explain why we like it, we thought it'd be really useful to bring in the president of the university to kind of give our listeners a deeper understanding of why a classical school matters and what kind of difference it would make in your child's education and development and flourishing. And so with no further ado, we have Dr. Sanford. He is Dr. Jonathan Sanford. He is the president of the University of Dallas. Dr. Sanford, welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to have two of our UD parents here with us. It's not parent weekend, but let's make it a weekend here. It's parent weekend at the kitchen table with Dr. Sanford. Listen, we appreciate you coming on the podcast.

You know, and again, we talk a lot about classical education, as Rachel just mentioned, and I'm just going to set the table for you. Sometimes I give too much information, I get kicked under the table. I was concerned about my daughter, Lucia. She's my third. And, you know, you kind of see all the influences in the social media. And I was nervous if I had sent her to a school that was a little more progressive, a little less, you know, rigorous in the education and the faith. I could have lost her.

To the culture. To the culture. That's right. And I got to tell you, we've sent her. She's now a sophomore at the University of Dallas, and the experience for her has been remarkable. So maybe just tell us, what is the University of Dallas? What is the philosophy around the university? Expand it to our listeners and viewers. Yeah, no, thanks for that question. And indeed, we're a private Catholic liberal arts university. We are widely recognized as being at the forefront of the movement in America right now that's usually called classical education. variety of ways in which we have provided explicit support for that movement. But that all comes from who we are. And who we are is, as a Catholic university, we've got what we call the core.

That's a two-year integrated program, lots of literature, lots of philosophy, history, language, arts, sciences, mathematics. And we have this signature moment in the sophomore year that we call the Rome program that's fully integrated into the core curriculum. And then on top of that, we have a wide variety of majors, but students are in a really strong position to make their way through those excellent majors because of that core curriculum. And we also, I should mention, we have a graduate school of liberal arts. We offer Ph.D. degrees and a wide array of master's degrees. And we have a college of business as well.

And the same philosophy that you find in the undergraduate program has trickled up into those graduate programs. So we produce graduates who are individuals of strong moral character. Those who are Catholic are strengthened in their faith. Those who are not Catholic nevertheless benefit from the Catholic ethos of the place. All of our graduates can communicate effectively. They think clearly. They write well. And they are people that employers have made it very clear they want in their corporations. We do an outstanding job in med school preparation. We have one of the highest med school placement rates in the country. A lot of our graduates go on into PhD programs. And a little known fact is that 12 bishops have graduated from the University of Dallas. And within a relatively short institutional history, that's a remarkably high number. So even though we're Catholic, we're not run by a religious

order. We've got Dominican sisters, the Nashville Dominican sisters teaching for us. We're building a convent for them. We have a Dominican priory on campus. We have a Cistercian monastery next door, but we're not run by the diocese either. But what we do is our students learn how to defend the positions that they come to hold through careful analysis of texts, work on scientific and mathematical fronts. And we're always pushing them to provide evidence for claims that they make. And I sometimes think that the love language of a typical University of Dallas student is argumentation. of a typical University of Dallas student is argumentation. You walk across campus and you will find them engaged in really vivacious debates about matters

that can be current, but also are really rooted in the Western tradition. So they're thinking, they tend to be happy. We've often been rated one of the happiest student bodies in America, but happy and not a, you know, walking on cloud nine sort of way all the time, but just healthy, happy into the world and to be outstanding fathers, mothers, business people, scientists, artists, you name it. Our graduates are doing a wide variety of things. Well, so here are some of the things that I think I noticed right away that was different than the universities that my older kids went to. Immediately, so first of all, the philosophy of the school is that everything isn't relative. There are truths that are eternal. And the whole process is about getting to that truth.

And it could be through the Socratic method with which you guys teach. But I want to emphasize this core because that is the biggest sort of most obvious difference. So when my oldest child went to University of Chicago, which is considered, you know, a very elite, you know, fancy school here, you know, among the, you know, our culture, you know, everybody was always really impressed when I said, if you don't went to Chicago, University of Chicago was really impressed. And but it was sort of like a hodgepodge curriculum, like, there were a few, you know, mandatory things she had to take. But, you know, she didn't have, like, everybody on campus wasn't getting the same thing or being rooted in that core curriculum in those books, those great books that you talk about.

Maybe you could give us a little bit of what that first year looks like in terms of that literature, that everyone's steeped in these ideas. From there, they can have those discussions that you're talking about that they have on their own accord on campus. Yeah, great, great observation. Great question. So let me let me make one observation about the fruit of that core curriculum. Then I'll just say a few things about the core curriculum. The observation is that friendships really develop in a deep way because of the curriculum that the students all share. Every freshman walking into their first semester is working through the heroic literature of Western civilization. And some of them may have already read the Iliad or the Odyssey or the Aeneid, but they benefit greatly from working through those texts together. And C.S. Lewis points out the difference between romantic love and friendship in these terms. In romantic love, you're interested in the other person because they're there.

You're in love with them. in the other person because they're there. You're in love with them. Friendship always requires a common object to bring people together. And they move forward shoulder to shoulder, gazing upon ultimately the true, the good, and the beautiful. And so we don't tell our students what they're supposed to think.

We're not ideologically driven. We put before them those works that enable them to suss out and catch glimpses of that which is indeed true, that which is truly beautiful, that which is really good. And we find ways to get them to think through that. So the literature sequence, that's a really distinctive feature of the University of Dallas. There are four literature courses. After they read through that heroic literature of Western civilization, all of them read Dante's Divine Comedy. All of them work through the birth of the novel. All of them read Shakespeare extensively. And that enables them to be truly literate. That used to be something that our culture valued tremendously, right? All of them also work through the whole Bible. All of the

students read the Bible, whether or not they're religious. It's necessary to really have your sense of what it is to be an inheritor of this tradition. All of them work through the great works of Western philosophical works. So Plato, Aquinas, Aristotle is a major figure in the core curriculum. All of them have two courses in American history, two courses in Western civilization. All of them work through the founding documents of the United States. We consider patriotism to be a genuine virtue. We want our students to understand deeply the structure of our government and the reason for being structured this way. All of our students work through two

courses in the sciences that have labs. So they're not sort of made up science courses for non-majors. They're serious science courses. All of them learn a language to the point at which they're able to read in that language. And all of them take economics. It is absolutely necessary, if you're going to are providing for our students ways, the ways that human beings have engaged with the world through imaginative literature, through Holy Scripture, through various languages. They all need to learn how to think scientifically, economically, and so forth. And one of the fruits of that is that it allows you to spot an argument as valid or invalid. And in today's world, where people are just overwhelmed with ideological pushes, to be able to think for yourself and to be able to spot baloney when it's thrown your way is absolutely invaluable. So they understand themselves to be citizens. They understand themselves to be truly literate members of the human society. And that's a real blessing. It's a rare thing. It is. You know, Doctor, I kind of think of this as this is maybe an education that someone who went to a college or university in the 20s, they would have read the same books or in the 50s. Not all of this progressive garbage that has been fed into the university system today.

And I have a conversation with one of my kids who likes to poke me a little bit. And he's like, I don't know that I want to go to college. I say that I think you should go to the University of Dallas too. And he's like, maybe I want to be a welder. I want to be a plumber. I'm like, that's fine. You can be a welder. You can be a plumber. That is your choice. And those are noble, wonderful careers. But I also want you to have an enlightened mind. And so I want you to go to have an enlightened mind, and then you can go off and be a plumber. And by the way, it's four years of your time and a lot more money out of my pocket. The sacrifice is bigger for me to give you an enlightened mind than it is for you to go the four years and you're going to enjoy it. Talk to me about this. So if

before we found you, Dallas, we always hear about Hillsdale. And you hear a lot of wonderful things about Hillsdale as a classical college or university in Michigan. What's the difference between Hillsdale and UDallas? Are they the same? What differences would you say are between the two colleges? Because I think a lot of people would know Hillsdale more so than your university. Yeah, no, it's a good question. So Hillsdale is not Catholic. So that's a big glaring difference. I think our core curriculum makes a little bit more sense. I think we've got, and what I mean by that makes sense as an integrated whole expressing Western civilization. Hillsdale is really a wonderful school, and I don't want to say anything negative.

These are differences that I think anyone there would acknowledge. A good chunk of their faculty are University of Dallas graduates, either those who graduated from the undergraduate program at the University of Dallas, or they have a number of our Ph.D. graduates who teach there. President Arnn, I know, sent at least one daughter to the University of Dallas. So there's a mutual admiration, but I think we are a little bit less politicized. I speak in terms of students really embracing the vocation of a student while they're students here. We are in DFW, which provides all kinds of opportunities for internship exploration.

Meaning Dallas-Fort Worth, DFW, Dallas-Fort Worth area, right? Yeah, Dallas-Fort Worth. So it's a booming economy here. And a lot of our students are getting interested in finance, which is really growing up here, high tech. And those interests are compatible with the education that we provide. We've got a number of major financial corporations who've said, we don't care what major your graduates are pursuing.

We want your graduates. And so that's a, you know, it's a confirmation that we're doing something right. But but the the cultural experience is is different here because of Dallas-Fort Worth. And then the Rome semester that we have really is a unique, distinctive thing. I know Hillsdale does study abroad. We actually own our own campus outside of the city of Rome. And most of our students take advantage of that semester study abroad. And so you've got, to put it very simplistically, right, we can wave two flags here, both the Vatican flag and the American flag. And I don't want to pretend like those two are compatible in every way. There's all kinds of exploration to go on there.

And the curriculum, we're a little bit heavier in literature, a little bit heavier in Western civilization, a little bit stronger in philosophy. And then we have the Rome program. We do have a lot of students who intern in Washington, D.C., as Hillsdale does. But yeah, so those are at least some of the differences. We'll have more of this conversation after this. The Fox News Rundown, a contrast of perspectives you won't hear anywhere else. Your daily dose of news twice a day. Featuring insight from top newsmakers, reporters, and Fox News contributors. Listen and subscribe now by going to foxnewspodcast.com.

So let's talk. First of all, I love that you mentioned the Dominican sisters who are teaching on campus and also the seminary that's there. I know my daughter has actively talked about how much her faith and her journey as a young Christian has been deepened by knowing and interacting and being taught by some of these sisters and the interaction with some of the priests and seminarians. So I love that sort of, you know, that integration, I think, is really powerful. I want to talk a little bit about Rome, because our daughter happens to be right now experiencing that Rome semester. So before she left, well, over Christmas, before she left, some of her friends who had already gone to Rome the semester before came to our house. And they, of course, we were getting all the information about, you know, this, it was, we did this, we did that. And one of them, she's so exuberant, and she was like, I'm a different person. And, you know, of course, I'm,

you know, 52, I kind of chuckled a little bit. And, you know, I just kind of took it as, you know, youthful exaggeration, if you will. You know, she's a different person. But then Lucia went to Rome. And since she's been there, the course where, you know, she's taking courses in literature and architecture and art. literature and architecture and art. She's going on trips with the school to Greece. She's been touring Assisi and learning all the history, the Catholic history, the sort of Christian history of Italy, of the continent. She's been in other countries as well. She went to Poland on a separate trip to learn there. So anyway, she's been doing all kinds of stuff.

Every time I talk to her, she is a different person. She is so deepened in her faith in a way that has really blown both of us away. And it's not just the coursework and it's not just the trips, Dr. Sanford, it is the close interaction that she has had with the teachers, which I know she had that when she was on campus, but she has been, I think in a different way, much closer, right? Cause it's a smaller group,

getting to know adults who are single and married, newly married, with lots of kids, and sort of seeing and witnessing up close how these families, how these marriages operate. And I think, obviously, we would like to think that she would look to us, you know, but she's a teenager. She's now 20. She's also looking to other people.

So many young people are going onto campuses and getting bad examples. I just feel like, wow, when I wrote that tuition check, I didn't know I was getting this too. I didn't know that I was going to get the chance for my daughter to see wonderful Christian Catholic families, marriages, single adults, religious life adults operating in the world. And that all of that was also going to be part of this experience and part of my tuition that I paid for. We've got to find a better way to market what we do. Maybe you should hire me. I'm like your biggest cheerleader. I, too, have a sophomore at the University of Dallas and and and I have a graduate of the University of Dallas and I'll have a freshman at the University of Dallas in the fall. And what you just articulated is the biggest reason why we want our kids at the University of Dallas. the dean and then I was provost and I trust them. I know that they are top of their game in their

fields and they're top of the game in terms of what it is to be a good human being, a faithful witness to their own religious tradition. Most of them are Catholic, naturally, and they love our students. And this is where, you know, when you write those tuition checks, this is where most of our money goes, is finding really excellent faculty members, making sure that our class sizes are not too big, so that you've got the environment for that that kind of intimate relationship that can be built up between students and a faculty member and dr sanford can i can i explain like more specifically so like for example the dean of your school in rome is married to another phd mom of like i think is it six it six kids? Six or seven. Yeah. Six or seven kids. We lose count after a while.

I get it. It's a lot. And they're expecting their first grandchild. She's seeing them balance their lives, their children, their professions, their faith, their commitment to their faith, their commitment to, you know, their vocations on a level like, and so, of course, she's telling me about her trips and she's telling me about what her friends did and how this test went. But she's also telling me so many stories about these, what I know are incredible examples

of Christians in action. And boy, I mean, you can't pay for that. You just can't pay for that. Yeah, the Doctors Roams are really remarkable people. And they're good friends, my wife and I. And in fact, my wife is a board member for a Catholic pro-life women's group called Mighty is Her Call that Catherine Roams, Dr. Catherine Roams, founded about six years ago and continues to lead while she's been in Rome. And Ron is just a top-notch patristic scholar. He's a theologian. And they are so inspiring. They're fantastic parents. And this was their vision. So, Ron Roms took over as the dean just this past year. And as we were exploring his possible move into that role, it was with this in mind, that they would be able to share their lives with the students while they're there in a way that

you just can't really imagine unless you've seen it in action, which I have. And it's no surprise have. And it's no surprise that your daughter is remarking upon that because I know the Romans, but I'm so heartened to hear that it's working so effectively. Yeah, it's working. It is working. And I look at our culture, and Rachel and I talk about the culture a lot, and all the influences that try to undermine everything that we've tried to teach our kids and at one point you you send them out into the world and they have to fly and hopefully they they fall back on some of some of your teachings some of the experiences they had in your home and you hope they're going to be good, healthy young adults. And what I found in this experience with UDallas is that

everything that we've taught, everything we've tried to showcase for our kids is reinforced, not undermined, at the University of Dallas, which for me is... And building upon it. Yeah, that's really heartening. I want to get to one other point. So obviously, you're a Catholic, we're Catholics, this is a Catholic college, but I have to imagine you have non-Catholics that come to UDallas and probably find the education. They may not love the Catholicity of the college, but they love the education of the college. So do you have this crossover of non-Catholics coming to the university, to the college? Well, yeah. Yeah. So, you know,

we're, our undergraduate population tends to be somewhere between 70 and 75% Catholic. Not all of them come in on fire for their faith, but we attract, you know, non-Catholic Christians. We attract Jewish students. We attract some Muslim students. And then just regular old people who don't identify with any religious tradition, who know that the University of Dallas is rigorous. We've got an absolutely stellar reputation as a liberal arts university, and you just don't find universities like us elsewhere. And, you know, you were making that observation that the core curriculum is the kind of college experience you might have expected in the 1950s. the 1950s. And we've got our own twist on that. And we've become more and more distinctive because we've held on to that really rigorous education, and that continues to send strong signals. We also have real strengths in the arts. We've got four studio arts, both on the undergraduate level and MA and MFA. And that tends to attract a wide array of students.

So, you know, in our classical education master's program, we even carved out a Jewish concentration. And we did this in partnership with our friends at the Tikvah Fund. And we've got 20 students, two of whom already have PhDs, who are getting master's degrees from us while they're teaching in Jewish classical education schools in the Northeast. So we were founded with the purpose of being open to people of whatever background, faith, tradition, economic, you name it. And we continue to be that.

And that's at the heart of what it is to be Catholic with a small C, but also with a big C. We're a place for everyone. And we surveyed, I think it was about two years ago, our student body when we were going through a brand refresh exercise. And our non-Catholic students identified the Catholicism of the University of Dallas as one of their most unexpected and delightful experiences at the university. They just didn't appreciate the difference it would make in the ethos of the place. So, it is a place that is traditional. We want to support people's path towards knowledge, and there are all kinds of opportunities for people to explore the Catholic faith, but we don't force this on anyone. Freedom is really at the root of our approach at the

University of Dallas. So as parents who, as we mentioned before, have done it, you know, this whole college thing in different ways, you know, one of the most shocking things for us was with our first, when we dropped her off at UChicago. We're both going to get a little PTSD as we tell you this story. You know, the dorms are co-ed, which, by the way, at Dallas, they are not. But not only were they. I'm old school. I didn't know they had co-ed dorms.

What is wrong here? Yeah. We were busy having babies, and then we realized that the university isn't co- is in that boys and girls are sharing the same bathroom, showering next to each other. Like what is, who's, who made this decision? This is right in the middle of me too, as well. We're like, this is not a good situation for anybody. And we're leaving our daughter in this environment. It was scary because it was actually, if I recall,

it was right in the middle of the whole Brett Kavanaugh hearings, right? So already, like, like you said, all this U2 stuff was happening. And she's in a in a dorm that was co-ed. And they shared bathrooms with the boys. And the showers were like these really flimsy curtains. And I was like, Okay, this is these are 1000 B2 moments about to happen here in this shower, you know, in this room, in this bathroom. And then we left and we were like, you know, really stressed out when we left. And then our daughter called us to say that right after we left, they had a bowl. Well, no, but first they had like a meeting with all the freshmen where they said, listen, your parents are gone now. And college is about you experimenting.

And that means you experimenting sexually as well. And you should know that we're encouraging you to experiment sexually outside of the opposite gender. This is a time for sexual experimentation. By the way, we took it away while your parents were here, but now that your parents are gone, we have a bowl in the bathroom with condoms for you. And then they said, but don't rely too heavily on them. We've heard they're kind of weak.

It was like, what's going on here? This was the story we got back. And of course, we were like, what have we done? Now, she survived that experience, thankfully, stronger in her faith for a lot of reasons, which I'm not going to get into right now. But she survived. We came away going, not every child is the same. And not every one of them would go through this experience and survive this thing.

And we were not the same after that experience. We barely did. It took us a while to figure out, this is insane. Like, we can't keep paying for this stuff. But one of the things that was so shocking was in Lucia's first year at Dallas, she said, oh, yeah, there's a men's club on campus. And I'm going to this dinner because all the men are putting on a dinner for all the women because it's Valentine's Day. And I was like, wow, this is a throwback to

the 50s. What's happened? It was just, there are things that are happening on campus that maybe parents who are sending their kids there aren't even aware of that are so counter-cultural that it's just kind of mind-blowing, Dr. Sanford. It's mind-boggling. And, you know, the student life side of the university equation is, it's really been a tip of the spear for sort of the sexual revolution being fully planted within the college campus life. You know, Tom Wolfe's last novel, I think it's I Am Charlotte Simmons. Yeah, I read that. What happens, you know, it's got some racy scenes, but it's for a purpose. He's showing what happens on a typical college campus. First, the corruption of the mind, right? You dissolve the moral foundations that your parents

raised you with, and then, you know, complete depravity. And then you become a relativist with a terrible history of sexual experimentation, and you carry that baggage the rest of your life. It's a terrible formula. So we're not explicitly trying to go back to the 50s in our approach to student life. We do recognize human nature being what it is. We want to put the burden on the student. If you want to misbehave, and we don't hesitate to call certain actions misbehavior, you're going to have to work hard at it. So you don't put people in the near occasion on a regular basis. And then the other thing we noticed is that young people today, because so much of their life has been mediated through screens, they have a really hard time

talking to each other. Young men talking to young women and vice versa. So we've really cultivated a dating culture. We bring in speakers who focus on, you know, what is it to go out on a date? It's not, this is not, okay, I'm going to get married to this person because I just went on a date with them. And it's also not an opportunity to hook up. You build friendships. You explore personalities of the other. But how do you get started doing that?

How do you even begin? And so we've just identified a real need here to teach our young people how to go about doing healthy, normal interactions of the sort that I'm the I'm the same age as you guys also have nine kids. And, you know, these things were more natural when we were growing up. And well, I think I think Dr. Sanford kids figure out how to, as you say, misbehave. They figure that out. They don't need the university helping. And I think that's that maybe is the difference. Right. I mean, there's all kinds of of activities that are school sanctioned at all these public universities that your tuition dollars are paying for that are

absolutely intended to undermine them morally. So I just and for example. And the fact that they put the condom bowl back after you left, right? That shows they, you know, they're doing it. You know who pays the bill. But I mean, it goes to this point too. So again, 18, 19, 20, 20, these are young adults and they will do immature things. They're going to have fun, right? They didn't go to a convent or a monastery when they go to UDallas, because I hear the stories and all the girls come to my house.

I'm hearing the stories about the things that they do and did. But I also know that there is this moral fiber around what they're doing and the environment in which they live. And so there's tendencies to not always be the most well-behaved. The pressure is to be well-behaved, right? And calling out the best of these young kids, which is what I like. And again, so I want to make sure if you're thinking about going to Udallis, it's not a... You're not going to a convent. There's no question. No, no. We are counting, you know, we're not counting who's at mass and who's not and nothing, nothing like that.

So our students have a lot of experience, a lot of freedom. But, yeah, the the the moral fabric, the institution is very clear about where we stand on premarital sex. We're very clear about where we stand on a whole host of issues. And it's the students themselves who put the positive peer pressure on each other and kind of encourage each other to move in the right direction. So there's a kind of failure. You know, you got drunk last night. What were you thinking? and they look out for each other we'll have more of this conversation after this i i've i've literally heard those conversations i don't know yeah around our dinner table with all the girls that we've heard these stories about this freight thing

which i won't but but but the yeah exactly there is a there is a guardrail around it there is a you know they know what the right thing is to do. And then your children also, your young adults who go to a university like University of Dallas, they're interacting almost like by this self-selected group of families that send their kids here because they want that. And I think that's also a positive that is really hard to put a price on, right? I mean, like your kids are interacting with people where their ideas, their values are not some foreign, crazy, radical idea of a Christian morality. They're interacting with people who fail and don't fail, just like every other human being, but who think that these are good values. And I think that that's invaluable, of course. Yeah, no, and it's remarkable during the honors convocation when the seniors often announce their plans after they graduate, how many of them are engaged to each other, right?

That's a beautiful thing. That's your marketing right there, Dr. Sanford. That's what you should be marketing. And we haven't done the research on how many of those marriages are lasting and really rich marriages. But just anecdotally, I know a huge number of them are, right? So we're bucking the trend there. This is a place where you can find somebody who, if you're called to marriage, you've got a really good chance. Not all of our students do, but the friendships,

the friendships that form while they're here continue afterwards. I've never seen alumni care so deeply about the university still and about each other. And they love to come back to campus and reconnect. It's a remarkable thing. There's someone who works at Fox who went to UDallas and she heard that our daughter was going. She lit up and was telling stories about her time at UDallas, and she heard that our daughter was going, she lit up and was telling stories about her time at UDallas and how much our daughter is going to love it. And she's still friends with her friends that she made there, and they still get together once a year. You're right, the alumni, because of the experience, are really tied to the campus as well.

May I recommend, Dr. Sanford, that you dig into those numbers with your alumni, figure out how many marriages, how many are lasting, how many kids? Because our highest rated podcast, Sean, are when we do episodes on love and marriage and relationships. For the reason that you said that so many people in this generation are on screens and have difficulty, you know, meeting people. I think that's a real marketable feature of your university is that social part of it. So. Yeah, you know, as we, I know you got to go, we have to go as well. But I always say this, my theory on America, and if you want to save it, because I think we're in trouble as a country. If you want to save America, save your family. That's the first thing you have to do. And that's the most, you have the most control over your own family. And so if you want to save it,

if you save your family, and we all start saving our own family, our own kids, we're going to save this country. And part of saving your family is making sure that all the work you do is not undermined by some radical leftist university that has professionalized undermining all that you've taught them. And so to send them to continue that education at a place that's going to match your values that you mentioned, you're a patriotic university. It makes a lot of sense. And to turn out a young adult that is good, is moral, is smart, is well-rounded. What more could we want from our children? And we talk about University of Dallas, but there's a number of schools out there that offer that. There's not that many, but there are a number of them. You're one of them. And we couldn't be more blessed to have our daughter in the hands of the University of Dallas.

We feel very safe and secure with what your university offers and how you match the values that we've tried to raise our kids with. So we couldn't be more. We couldn't be more happy. We I think you guys have overperformed, if I have to say. if I have to say. We've been surprised at every turn, how excited she is about the book she's reading, the quality of the book she's reading, how excited she is in her faith, how she's blossomed in her faith. How good the professors are. How great the professors are, how much they care, this Rome experience, which has expanded her horizons, all of it has been

so remarkable. So before we go, I want to give you one last chance, because again, the key I think is the classical part. One last, I think, hook that you could give our listeners to understand what classical means and why that needs to be a key when they're trying to figure out what universities to send their kids that they've spent 18 years trying to raise. Yeah. So thank you for that. And I'm so pleased that your daughter is having such a wonderful experience at the University of Dallas. Thank you for putting her into our care. And thank you for this opportunity to talk about the University of Dallas. Thank you for putting her into our care. And thank you for this opportunity to talk about the University of Dallas. So the approach to education we take at the University of Dallas is the approach that is tried and true for our greatest figures in history, right? It's

the education that our great men and our great women, our founding fathers, the greatest scientists, the greatest artists, we provide that education. And we do so in a way that will strengthen the sense of who they are rooted in those values that you instilled in them. And we do it in a way where we want them oriented towards renewing culture. We don't want our graduates to go out and circle the wagons. We want them running the corporations that everyone else is concerned about because what they're doing right now. We want to take over those organs of authority and industry in this country with well-formed, really creative, smart, wonderful human beings. And that's our mission.

I love it. Dr. Sanford, thank you for doing such a great job with the university. I know you're the 10th president of the university. You have done well. We are proud of the university, proud that our daughter goes there. And we are grateful that you would join us at the kitchen table and share some of the insights of what young minds get when they go to your university. So thank you for that.

Please keep up the good work. And again, as our family save America, so too is your university. We're you for that. Please keep up the good work. And again, as our family save America, so too is your university. We're all going to save America together. Yeah. Thank you for being with us. It's go time. All right. Thank you, Dr. Sanford. Listen, I wanted to do that podcast because this is one example, and we love this example because our daughter goes here, but it's one example of probably two handfuls of schools that are out there that you can feel safe sending your kids to. And by the way, if we have kids that become liberals and they're free thinkers and

got there on their own, I don't love it, but I can applaud that because I raised a free thinker. But when they're indoctrinated in these little commie camps called universities, that's what I can't have. And I can't tolerate. And I'm guaranteed to get enlightenment, not indoctrination at a place like U Dallas or Hillsdale or Liberty. There's a number of schools that are, that are very good. So when, when they, when they're at the university of Dallas, they actually, um, they're in

small seminar classes. And for most of their classes, it's small seminar classes. They're required to do the reading before. They're taught in that Socratic method where whatever they say, they have to defend. So they're getting critical thinking. And again, they're not telling them what to believe. They're presenting them the classics, the books that, as you said, the greatest minds in the world have read and have learned. And our entire Western civilization

legal system, government systems are based on an understanding of these great works that have stood the test of time. And so they're required to read them and analyze them critically. They can be against it or for it, but they have to critically defend their position in these seminar classes that are taught in the Socratic method, which is the way courses were taught, as you said, forever. I mean, our founding fathers were taught in that way. And so, they're required to memorize passages, they're required to use their mind in that way. And all of this is laid out. So, whether you're a math major, or a humanities major, you all get this

first couple years of this foundation. And then from there, you can go forward. I think it's remarkable. It sounds revolutionary, but it's just taking from the past what's always worked and not reinventing the system. And again, Sean, I mean, we know people who are from good Catholic, Christian, conservative families who send their kids to public universities and their kids come out fully indoctrinated. And that is the story of the last 20, 30 years for most families. And this is something totally different. Because the university system has figured out, what do I tell them? What do I teach them?

I love how you said they professionalized it. You're so right. And how do I get young conservatives after four years to come out as young radicals? They're really good at it. They do it really well. And we pay them for it, Sean. And so why would I send my child into that environment where they're really good? And I know they're going to try to undermine everything I've taught my child.

Why would I send them there? Because I love them so much. But why would I give my harder money to that? Do you know why people do it, Sean? do you know why people do it do you know why they do it prestige prestige some of it is prestige right so like we felt that like when evita got into university of chicago no better though either people were really impressed by you know if your kid gets into princeton if your kid gets into yale i mean for some parents that's bragging rights right but what they don't understand is that they're also paying for somebody to undo everything that they believe in. But the other thing I was going to say is that the reason a lot of them send it is because for a lot of them,

it's their alumni of those schools, and they have a nostalgia for what the school was. Maybe in the 70s, it wasn't so woke when they went, or the 80s, or the school was. Maybe in the 70s it wasn't so woke when they went, or the 80s, or the 90s. But now they are, and as you said, they have completely professionalized this. They are not about enlightening minds. They're not about teaching. They're about taking your kid and turning them into little Marxist activists.

And that's their goal. Democrat voters, Democrat activists, socialists, Marxists, radicals, that's what they're there to do. Don't give them your money. Don't give them your child. Protect your kids. And by the way, if more parents are looking for these kind of classical, one, the K-12 or the university system, the more demand there is, the more universities are going to go to it, are going to move to it. Because the enlightened minds that come out of them are going to be well sought after.

So, again, I appreciate Dr. Sanford. I feel very blessed that our daughter has had this experience. She's had some experiences in Rome that I should probably get mad if I mention. But good and bad alike waking us up at two in the morning to help figure things out but we got it all resolved nothing bad but just you know teenage stuff 19 year old kids tough all right listen you just say just enough to pique people's mind and then you don't tell them what's going on i don't know if you're going to kick me under the table because I'm not supposed to say it. She lost her passport.

She lost her passport. The first trip she went on, she lost her passport. Then she had to go to the consulate by herself. And then I told her to get money to go to the consulate to get the passport, and she went with no money. And so we finally got it figured out because her wallet was gone, too. She didn't have a credit card. But you know what? It was a good experience for her, actually.

I do too. I think in the end, nothing happened. And she's better for it. And guess what? She makes sure she has her passport when she travels. Anyway, listen, sorry, Lucia. We just sold you out. Listen, thank you for joining us at the kitchen table.

If you like us, rate, review, subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com. Subscribe, get a notice when we drop. And again, thanks for being with us. And I appreciate Dr. Sanford and New Dallas for doing all they do for young minds in America. Until next time, we'll see you later. Bye, everybody. Bye.

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