The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational institute based in Mecosta, Michigan, home of the American writer and thinker Russell Kirk (1918–1994).

Russell Kirk at his deskContinuing in the tradition of Dr. Kirk, the Center’s mission is to strengthen the foundations—cultural, economic, and religious—of Western civilization and the American experience within it. Its programs and publications have a particular focus on moral imagination and right reason. They celebrate and defend the “permanent things”—all that makes human life worth living, particularly the bedrock principles that have traditionally supported and maintained the health of society’s central institutions: family, church, and school.

The Center’s efforts are directed at students, business and religious leaders, policy makers, and the general public. It identifies, educates, and mentors thoughtful men and women, and develops and promotes the writing of both established and emerging thinkers.

The Center also seeks to further these aims through cooperation with people and groups worldwide that are committed to revitalizing our common cultural inheritance.

To these ends the Center offers an unrivalled program of seminars and unique facilities for the support of undergraduate, graduate, and senior residential fellowships. It also has its own list of publications, which includes America’s oldest conservative quarterly review of books, The University Bookman.

We are grateful for your interest in the Russell Kirk Center and invite you to learn more about our mission and projects.

Real progress consists in the movement of mankind toward the understanding of norms, and toward conformity to norms. Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms, and away from obedience to norms.

Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things, 1969

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News and Events

New Bookman

University BookmanThe new Spring issue of the University Bookman is out and the full contents are posted on our site. The issue is devoted to the art of biography with reviews of new books on Ralph Adams Cram (by Dan McCarthy), Orestes Brownson, conservative luminary Gerhart Niemeyer, and others. Subscribe here.

Apr 2008

Kirk Audio: Two Revolutions

We have posted a 50-minute audio lecture from 1990 with Dr. Kirk speaking on Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and related themes.

Apr 2008

Open Court Backlist Find

Open Court Publishing has found a stock of three Kirk-related books that had been thought out of print. You can order books directly from them by calling 800-815-2280 (or +1-603-924-7209); they do not appear on their website. The books available are Kirk’s essay collections Enemies of the Permanent Things and Beyond the Dreams of Avarice and the essay collection in his honor, The Unbought Grace of Life, edited by James E. Person, Jr.

Apr 2008

Kirk and Buckley on Video

The Kirk Center is pleased to announce that will periodically be posting video clips from our archive on the web site. The first two videos are now available—a 1993 interview with Russell Kirk on the fortieth anniversary of The Conservative Mind, and a 1996 interview with the late William F. Buckley, Jr. on his relationship with Dr. Kirk. Watch for further updates!

Mar 2008

William F. Buckley, RIP

Gerald Russello expresses our condolences on the death of William F. Buckley.

Feb 2008

Lectures by Kirk; Lectures about Kirk

The Olin Online Lecture Library at ISI features several audio lectures by Russell Kirk, as well as several new video and audio lectures about Kirk and his legacy by such scholars as W. Wesley McDonald, Ted McAlister, Michael P. Federici, George H. Nash, Gleaves Whitney, and Allan C. Carlson.

Feb 2008