130 – Cultivating Kirk with Jeff Nelson

Perhaps no other individual (or person, for the benefit of the Kirkian insider) was more responsible for resuscitating intellectual conservatism back to life in the mid Twentieth century than Russell Kirk.  Today, Kirk's efforts to recover and conserve the "Permanent Things" lives on at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.  Co-founder and Vice Chair of the Russell Kirk Center, Jeff Nelson, joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to explore the legacy of Russell Kirk and its lasting impact on the conservative movement today.

 

About Jeff Nelson

From the Kirk Center bio:

Jeff Nelson co-founded the Kirk Center with Annette Kirk and is currently Vice Chairman of the Center's Board of Trustees.  He served in 1986 and again in 1989 as Dr. Kirk's personal assistant.

 

Dr. Nelson is Executive Vice President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wilmington, Delaware).  He also served as president of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (Merrimack, NH).  He received his B.A. at the University of Detroit, an M.A. at Yale University Divinity School, and was awarded his Ph.D. in American History at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

 

Dr. Nelson founded ISI Books, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's now nationally recognized publishing imprint, in 1993.  Under his direction, more than 110 books were published.  During that time he also edited two respected journals of thought and opinion: The Intercollegiate Review and The University Bookman, and is publisher of Studies in Burke and His Time.  He also is senior fellow of both the International G. K. Chesterton Institute (Toronto, ON) and the Centre for the Study of Faith and Culture in Oxford, England; and he is secretary of the Edmund Burke Society of America.

 

Dr. Nelson has edited two book collections: Redeeming the Time by Russell Kirk, and Perfect Sowing: Reflections of a Bookman by Henry Regnery; he co-edited an award-winning treasury of the historian John Lukacs' writings entitled Remembered Past; and was project director of the popular national college guide, Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools.  Dr. Nelson was featured in a New York Times front-page news article about a major reference work he co-edited, American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia; and he is series editor of The Library of Modern Thinkers.  Jeff Nelson is a frequent and popular guest on radio and television talk shows across the country.

 

You can follow Jeff on Twitter @JeffOttoNelson

 

About The Russell Kirk Center

The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is located in Kirk's ancestral village of Mecosta, Michigan.  It is at its heart a residential research and study center, a community of fellow travelers that lives together in the Center's six cottages, and gathers in the Kirk Library of some 15,000 books and in the family house, where ideas and community join in what Dr. Kirk used to describe, borrowing from Tolkien, as the Last Homely House. .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}