Our

History

Ralston College arose from a simple but tectonic insight: that we no longer have the educational institutions on which a free and flourishing human culture depends.

It was around 2006 that it became clear to the founding principals of Ralston College that reform of higher education from within was a losing battle: that only new institutions could be sufficiently free from the ideological momentum, rent seeking, and corruption of the status quo.

The work involved was complex. Many may wish to, but you can’t just start a college. It needs a legal entity and home. In the American context, it needs the determination by the IRS of a tax-exempt status. It needs a curricular vision that is the fundamental mission of the college, and it needs people who will support and shepherd the institution into being. It needs to be able to attract superb teachers, and highly talented students, and to be credible and legible within its cultural milieu, however far it departs from the expected norm.

Then followed the birth of Ralston College in the form in which people now know it, as a platform, a community, a fellowship for all those who want to engage in the treasures of human enquiry, to seek the truth with courage. That community began through the podcast and the lectures and the events that have, in many ways, borne out our vision in unexpected ways. Those podcasts have already been seen by more people than we initially imagined would attend Ralston College in its whole history.

Over the past three years we have begun to build out our team—of scholars, administrators, philathropists and fundraisers, artists, architects, and other cultural figures, legal specialists, technologists, financiers, and great-hearted volunteers. We have received not only the support from but had the great gift of welcoming into our community people fleeing hostile regimes, or living with terminal illness, high school students trying to make their way, and disenfranchised scholars and people of all ages and races the world over, seeking to make sense of and grapple with the depth and complexity and beauty of human life.