DeVane Lecture 2026 Alumni Study Groups

This course explores the purposes of college education through the first great book on the philosophy of education, Plato’s Republic. We read The Republic in conversation with other thinkers including Aristotle, Confucius, John Stuart Mill, Virginia Woolf, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. For the 325th anniversary of Yale’s founding, we also explore the changing conception of college education at Yale over the centuries and read some of the college’s and the university’s key founding documents. Themes include the development of personal character, participation in a community, preparation for citizenship, and conversation with others on intellectual matters. We also explore some of the social and economic functions of college education.

Dean Pericles Lewis
Dean of Yale College and Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature