In her 2012 Commencement address (President’s Page, July 11), President Tilghman used the example of James Madison 1771 to demonstrate the essential nature of Princeton’s liberal education — which remains as valuable today as it was in the 18th century. She made explicit just how much Madison, John Witherspoon’s favorite pupil, owed to the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment in formulating those ideas that became central to the founding of the United States of America. His rhetorical skills in both writing and speaking, his moral sensibility, and his intellectual and logical rigor all were indebted to the Scottish intellectual background of which Witherspoon himself was an illustrious product.
Given such evidence of Scotland’s contribution to both Princeton’s and America’s history, is it not time that the University made available to its students a course focusing on the Scottish Enlightenment — and Scottish intellectual and cultural traditions more generally?