Academia

Wendell Berry Goes to School

If Baker and Bilbro succeed, students and professors will emerge believing that the goal is not to obtain a “good job” far away but to become a rooted, whole person. Continue Reading »

17 Sep 2018

Medieval Studies and White Supremacy

by Mark Bauerlein

Identity politics seems to be having difficulties in Medieval Studies, perhaps due to the nature of the field. Continue Reading »

13 Aug 2018

Evaluating the World’s Religions

by Francesca Aran Murphy

Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Buddhism deserve to be studied, not as geographic entities, but as products of religious insight. Continue Reading »

5 Oct 2017

In this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, there are countless angles from which to think about that event and its continuing significance. By no means the least important is the fact that Luther’s Reformation in particular was in many respects a university-based movement. And still in our . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2017

First Church of Intersectionality

by Elizabeth C. Corey

I recently attended an academic conference at the University of Notre Dame called “Intersectional Inquiries and Collaborative Action: Gender and Race.” It felt like a return to my undergraduate years in the early 1990s. I saw women with shaved heads wearing ethnic print scarves, Birkenstocks, . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Aug 2017

Caribbean Rhapsode

by Garrick Davis

The great poet of the Caribbean, Derek Walcott, passed away at home on his native island of St. Lucia on March 17. It is hard to summarize his achievement. He wrote more than twenty books of poetry, most notably Omeros (1990), which transplants the Trojan War to the Caribbean fishing world . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Aug 2017

Opening Up the World

by Mark Bauerlein

Academic dogma casts religiously inspired critique as narrow and bigoted, but my experience has been the opposite. Continue Reading »

14 Jun 2017

The War on Tenure

by Jennifer A. Frey

Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue truth in good faith, unimpeded by fear of dismissal by those who wield power. Now it is under threat.
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23 May 2017

The Protest

by Malcolm Rivers

It wasn’t a perfect evening for a demonstration. The night was cold and damp. On the rain-slick concrete stairs of Harvard’s University Hall, thirty-five undergraduates crowded together, hoping for news coverage and bantering nervously. After weeks of planning, finally the day had come, and we . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2016

While We’re at It

by R. R. Reno

♦ An exchange of emails by Clintonistas, available courtesy of WikiLeaks, has provoked a great deal of commentary. The chain starts with a message from John Halpin, a fellow at the Center for American Progress. He’s writing to John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign, and Jennifer . . . . Continue Reading »