The Blackboard 102
College and its End(s)
“College and its End(s)”---that was the title I had given to the section of senior seminar I taught this past fall. The class was conceived with two animating questions in…
A Call for a Politically Inclusive Classroom
Teaching Tolerance in a Time of Trump sounds like a short-course a firebrand professor might offer, though I mean it in a more comprehensive way than one might imagine. While…
Res Idiotica
South Bend, IN My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge…
Are Evangelical Colleges Parochial?
Hillsdale, Michigan. Readers may recall the dustup earlier in the summer when Peter Conn prompted pious gasps for suggesting that institutions like Wheaton College (the evangelical one) should not be…
The Uselessness of Liberal Education: An Apology
It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation. --St. Thomas Aquinas The trouble with mere pragmatism is that…
