What You Need to Know about Dana Gioia

dana1 December 17, 2013

Dana Gioia has spent his career making metaphors: drawing disparate things together to reveal the breadth and depth of aesthetic experience, but doing so in a way that has frequently provoked avant-garde artists and their academic minions even as it…

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A Semester of Teaching Sustainability

Phils December 14, 2013

[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res]
The semester has come to an end here at Friends University, and students are leaving campus for their holiday break. Right now I’m grading, and while I have many tests to grade, none interest me…

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It Can’t Get Any More Dumb-Assed Than This (Can It?)

Clusterfuck+weather_f1f562_4759102 December 11, 2013

Let us take in the full range of dumb-assedness.

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The Liberal Arts and the Educational Technology of Language

Uncle_Sam_(pointing_finger) December 9, 2013

THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSIGNMENT FOR YOU:…
This is what the bold text on the whitehouse.gov website tells us as it proudly heralds a new national “Student Film Contest”.   Next to the headline we find an image of the benevolently-smiling

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McClaughry Memoir: Ford and Carter

grandheyday December 7, 2013

The following is the third installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen.  See the previous chapters here and here.
5. Ford and the Ethnics 
Gerald Ford became vice president and then president after 25 years in Congress.…

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Your Time Has Come to Shine

images December 4, 2013

We have to do some etymological work if we’re serious about doubling our pain.

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What You Need to Know About Simone Weil

weil2 December 3, 2013

Born in 1909 to secular Jewish Parisians, at age 10 Simone Weil was memorizing Racine and marching in labor union protests.  She attended the École Normale and then briefly taught philosophy to lycée girls, serving on weekends as a volunteer…

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A Message in a Bottle

message-in-the-bottle-582414-m December 2, 2013

Every now and then we hear of a lucky homeowner who takes down a wall to make renovations on his house, and finds inside it a cache of wonders; dozens of original posters advertising movies from seventy and eighty years…

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McClaughry Memoir: The Nixon Years

1803-10 November 29, 2013

The following is the second installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen.  See the previous chapters here.
3. The Community Self Determination Act 
During my year at the Institute of Politics at Harvard I fell in with…

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Being Thankful for National Communities and Civil Religion, Sometimes

November 28, 2013

[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res]
Amongst those Americans who believe that the civic virtues which make both popular government and a fulfilling independence possible are themselves dependent upon, to a great extent, the preservation of traditions and an attachment to…

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The “Global Learning Requirement” and the Rectal-Cranial Inversion

Head_up_ass November 26, 2013

It’s a document that asks putatively open—but actually closed—questions.

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Are Porchers Urbane? Time to Wonder About Ourselves

rooftop garden November 25, 2013

As a student, I never trusted teachers who wanted to be part of student culture. You know the type, the teacher who wishes to have influence by becoming as much like a student as possible, usually caught up into intrigues.…

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Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen: a Memoir

nixonsigning320 November 22, 2013

John McClaughry is one of the most misunderstood figures in modern American politics. He served several terms in the Vermont House and state senate and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1982 and Governor of Vermont in 1992. (In…

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Airports are Non-Places

waiting-for-a-flight-1431536-m November 21, 2013

As I write this, Edward Snowden is moping his way through exile in the Moscow airport. He can’t leave because crossing through passport control would mean legally entering Russia, and a diplomatic fracas would ensue. So he sits, amid the…

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Bar Jester Five-O

heartfire November 20, 2013

What does a man do at the half-century mark? What he damn-well pleases.

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Gettysburg at 150: Some Essays

November 19, 2013

Holland, MI…
My wife will be the first to point out that I’m not much of one for marking anniversaries, but it seems – to use Lincoln’s language – fitting and right to take note of the fact that today

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