Ashley Thorne

The first-year reading program at Williams College, “turned out to be kind of like a bad blind date,” wrote Michaela Morton, a freshman at the time, in an article in the student newspaper. Continue Reading »

In the summer of 2006, I was luxuriating in the sunlit plazas of a city in Southern France, drinking in Mediterranean languor and la belle langue. Montpellier was seductive in its invitation to lie back and let the culture wash over its visiting students”an image, perhaps of modern day Vanity Fair. As it happens, however, I was also toting a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress, with its insistence on the need to get up and go on more urgent business… . Continue Reading »

How do American colleges and universities teach American history? Conservatives may have a ready answer: poorly. But a ready answer can just as readily be deflected. At the National Association of Scholars (NAS) we decided to find out, as precisely as possible, how history is actually taught at two major universities… . Continue Reading »