At ninety-four years old, Eva Brann is both the oldest and longest-serving tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, America’s premier Great Books liberal arts institution. She is also the most widely published member of the faculty, notable at a school aimed at cultivating the life of the mind in private, between friends, or in a seminar, rather than in the exhibitionist style encouraged by social media. She’s been awarded the National Humanities Medal and at least three honorary doctorates; even well into her late eighties, she remained a regular lecturer on liberal education and the liberal arts at colleges and universities throughout the country. Altogether, she’s written, edited, and translated upward of three dozen books (seven in the past decade alone). She’s one of America’s most prolific and wide-ranging intellectual luminaries—and yet also one of the quietest.
