next over the half.there stephen balch who has been the director of the institute for us civilizationat texas tech since 2012. before that for 25 years he was the founding president and chairman of the national association of scholars and a great organization dedicated to these traditional principles of liberal arts education so he has a long history of doing this. this institute at texas tech is probably one of the rare places of its kind in the united states. finally we have a very distinguished scholar at the end of the table dr. peter wyatt wood an anthropologist who holds tenure faculty position. dr. wood is served as provost of austin university. addition to a scholarly work is published hundreds of articles in publications like national review and the partisan review and all of them have made great contributions to the literature in their fields. with that, dr. bishirjian the floor is yours. thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> thank you. i invited my younger colleagues to come today because they know about the subject than i but all of us are concerned about whether o

vincent college in 2013 there was another one, stephen balch participated in that. but that's it. except for us. so not only are the seminars on western civilization vanishing like so is a discussion of it in our colleges and universities. the point here is were shaped by culture that's deep and old, goes back into history on greece and rome and the first part of christianity. it's vital that we understand what is involved. particularly the fact that at the center of our civilization is our religion, christianity, that has been critical to shaping the west. i made an effort to come up with a list of colleges that are actual engaged into something about the west. most of the usual suspects on that list including texas tech, grove city college, wyoming catholic and others. but this is a country of 3000 or more colleges, which there may be 2976 in which there is no course on history of western civilization. there is a book you can read it, however that would like to think of is the one very good source of history of the west, and that's russell kirk's roots of american order. russell