Мәдениеттерді дамытуға талпынған сәтсіз жоба: Либералдық өнерлер корпорациясының тарихы

Liberal Arts, Inc., was an unsuccessful corporation founded in late 1946, which intended to create a Great Books based liberal arts college in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is notable for failing despite the involvement of four educators of stellar reputation, and an offer of an apparently generous endowment, later withdrawn under unclear circumstances.

In 1937, Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan successfully established the Great Books curriculum at St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland, which continues to the present day. In 1946, Barr resigned the presidency of that institution "with the hearty good wishes of the board of trustees" to found a new college. According to Glen Edward Avery, Barr thought St. John's had grown too large and feared that its land was about to be seized by the U. S. Navy for its own academy. The first such threat had been made in 1940; St. John's was saved only by the direct intervention of President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. A 1946 newspaper story says that "the college's Damocles sword again threatened to drop in 1944, by which time St. John's had lost its two greatest friends in the government." The college's board of trustees was unable to get a definite answer from Congress, then in control of federal land taking, on whether St. John's land would be taken, and Barr wanted to secure "a home free of the endless menace of eviction." Charles A. Nelson, in Radical Visions, his biography of Barr and Buchanan, says they were convinced that "the navy would never accept final defeat They were wrong, but their judgement at the time is hard to fault. No one who can recall the temper of those times will forget how powerful the navy was."

Several sites were considered for the new college. The first choice was a site in New Lebanon, N. Y., occupied by the Darrow School, which refused to sell. The final choice was the estate of Dan Hanna (son of Mark Hanna) in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The choice of this location may have been influenced by Scott Buchanan, who, according to Samuel Sass, was familiar with the area, having graduated in 1912 from Pittsfield High School. The site, officially known as Bonny Brier Farm, already contained eighteen buildings, including an inn, a dormitory, and a boathouse located on 2500 feet (762 m) of lakeshore frontage on the lake known as Stockbridge Bowl. When the project was announced in 1946, Buchanan expected the institution to be open by September 1947, indicating that "the present buildings are sufficient to answer its purposes for the opening and the number of students attending in the first year or two." The site was about a mile and a half from Tanglewood, home of what was then called the Berkshire Symphonic Festival; in fact, it was the venue for that festival in 1934 and 1935, the first two years of its existence.

The enterprise was launched with a $4.5 million endowment from Paul W. Mellon, son of Andrew W. Mellon. Mellon had attended St. John's as a freshman in 1939, despite already holding degrees from Yale and Clare College, Cambridge, and studied there until 1942 when he left to enter the Army. A corporation was formed, named "Liberal Arts, Inc." Members of the corporation included Barr, Buchanan, famous educators Mark Van Doren of Columbia University and Mortimer J. Adler of the University of Chicago, two Pittsfield attorneys, and a legal secretary. Sass indicates that Robert M. Hutchins and Alexander Meiklejohn, former president of Amherst College and another "great books" luminary, also planned to join the college. The Hanna estate was purchased and deeded to the corporation in March 1947. The Hanna farm property was later sold in 1948 to Hans Maeder , who founded the Stockbridge School on the site. The school, a private school for adolescents, operated from 1949 to 1976 and was notable for being completely racially integrated from its inception The Stockbridge School included Jackie Robinson's son among its attendees.