Gene Fant

The horrifying news out of Penn State has many of us talking about ethics lately, especially those of us who work in academe as I do.  One of the terms I’ve heard mentioned the most is “loyalty,” as many commentators have observed that a misplaced sense of loyalty in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Many years ago, I overheard a mother talking about graduation announcements with her teenaged child in a restaurant where I was eating.  Apparently they were going over a list of folks who would receive announcements and the child started asking who most of the people were.  The mother . . . . Continue Reading »

On Graceful WritingRachel Toor has a fine essay at The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The Problem Is: You Write Too Well” (full text for subscribers only), which outlines a complaint that is heard with amazing frequency: your writing is too easy to read.  As Toor . . . . Continue Reading »

My academic training is in poetry but I love stout fiction, the kind Faulkner and Joyce wrote.  The kind that clothes life-like characters with carefully interwoven abstraction and emotional chaos.  Nothing emulates reality quite like these kinds of stories.  About a year ago I read . . . . Continue Reading »

While riding on a bus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group I was with skirted Harvard Yard, ground zero for American higher education.  The Harvard seal is ubiquitous there (the letters VE-RI-TAS imposed on open books), on t-shirts, signs, and buildings as far as the eye can . . . . Continue Reading »

Apparently it’s open season on the value of the liberal arts in contemporary higher education.  From new studies that reveal the paucity of financial rewards for humanities majors to complaints about the ideological insurgency that some see underway in the traditional study of arts and . . . . Continue Reading »

Many of our readers are interested in the question of how Christian colleges and universities evaluate and document their identity.  We can talk about curricula, hiring principles, governance, and many other factors. A ruling this week from the National Labor Relations Board has declared . . . . Continue Reading »

How nice it is to be able to type that title without the slightest tinge of irony.  The May 9 New York Times has a wonderful profile of the relief work of the Southern Baptist Convention.   As the story notes, the SBC is the third largest private disaster relief . . . . Continue Reading »

The inimitable Russ Moore spoke at chapel on my campus (Union University) last week.  He preached from Deut. 24: 14-22, making a fascinating link between caring for the least among us and the local church, using orphans / adoption as the illustrating framework for his message. As I . . . . Continue Reading »

In the most recent issue of First Things, Gerald McDermott writes about “Evangelicals Divided,” which explores current trends in evangelical life relative to what he describes as a struggle between traditionalists (who tend to be Reformed) and Meliorists (who tend to be Arminian). A . . . . Continue Reading »