The University is suffocating professors and students alike—depriving them of the pure air of truth. Education and its opportunities have long been constrained by the practical necessities of our lives: bound by time, location, and the extrinsically-imposed demand that we subjugate ourselves to servile labor in order to earn a paycheck and provide for our material wants and needs.  But today, the University constricts education even more from its own internal structure than its external necessities.  Professors who speak up for the truth are fired, see their contracts expire, or get squeezed out through various political pressures.  Students are guided away from the studies that enrich the mind and towards those promised to enrich the pocket.  Ideologies trump inquiries.

The Lyceum Institute is here to change all that: by utilizing the digital technology now always at our fingertips, we are building a community dedicated not only to continual, lifelong learning, but to building better intellectual habits.

This is not a program, a course, a certification process, nor simply a place to find content for passive consumption, but rather something to become a part of one’s life: a digital medium that directs one towards the development of perfective human habits.  Central to the Lyceum's mission are our Faculty Fellows, who teach seminars, languages, participate in the communal life of the Lyceum, and engage in research that advances our understanding of ourselves and the world—without the suffocations of University politics and ideologies.

These Faculty exert great effort of thought and time in aiding us and great courage in standing up for what is true.  Help us reward them justly, by contributing to the annual stipend fund which supports their work!  Any gift is welcome—as you can see below, this is only one part of our total fundraising goal for 2022.

2022 Budget Plans:

• 7 Faculty Fellows: 5 of whom will receive $3000+ stipends for teaching seminars/languages, 2 of whom will receive $500+ for seminar assistance.  Thus, we need a total of $16,000 for Fellow stipends.
• $1000+ research budget.  This is to purchase access to resources for research, e.g., journal access, access to resources from Past Masters, Scribd, JSTOR, etc.
• 6 Colloquia Lecturers: 5 of whom will receive $150 stipends for delivering a recorded lecture and participating in a one-hour Q&A session.  Thus, we need $750 for Colloquia stipends.
• Total goal for 2022: $20,000+

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Hello. I am Dr. Brian Kemple, Executive Director and Founder of the Lyceum Institute.

For three and a half years, I taught as an adjunct professor, at the University of St. Thomas in Houston TX and at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA. In those three and a half years, I made less than $35,000 teaching. That's less than $12,000 per year.

For two and a half of those years, I was also on the job market. I applied to 127 academic positions in that time--including my own PhD-granting alma mater—and received merely a handful of interviews. An application for an academic position often takes days to assemble (writing samples, letters of intent, research, seeking letters of recommendation, etc.).

Most faculty, when they get their first job, are awarded one-year contract as a "visiting" professor. This is a small step up from being an adjunct: better pay, but you're on the job market for the next year usually before the current academic year has begun. You are saddled with many classes, many students—most of them apathetic and begrudging that they have to take philosophy classes at all--much grading, expectations of service (advising, serving on committees, etc.), and no time in which to do your own research or writing or publication--without which, you'll never get a secure, tenure-track or tenured position.

Shouldn't there be a better way for our best, brightest, strongest intellectual leaders?