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College Students (and Colleges) Should Listen to Obama’s Advice 0
- Culture
- August 26, 2016
In Des Moines last year, President Obama told gatherers at a town hall that one of the primary benefits of college is that it challenges the assumptions and ideas of young minds. Or at least college should do that. Look, the purpose of college is not just…to transmit skills. It’s also to widen your
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A Recommended Reading List – from C.S. Lewis 0
- Education
- August 25, 2016
Over at the blog A Pilgrim in Narnia, Brenton Dickieson has done something kind of cool. He has taken C.S. Lewis’ book An Experiment in Criticism—in which Lewis attempts to answer the question “what makes a great book?”—and listed in chronological order all of the great books that Lewis references. The list serves not only
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Failure Can Inspire Humility (If You’re Wise)0
- Culture
- August 25, 2016
Failure is like the original sin in the biblical narrative: everyone has it. Regardless of class, caste, race, or gender, we are all born to fail, we practise failure for as long as we live, and pass it on to others. Just like sin, failure can be disgraceful, shameful and embarrassing to admit. And did
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Can we learn from Thucydides’ writings on the Trump of ancient Athens?0
- History
- August 25, 2016
There is much consternation, and quite a bit of alarm, at the recent vote of the British people to leave the EU, and the equally astonishing emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for the US presidency. Early on in these campaigns there was a tendency to mock Trump as a bit of a
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Univ. of Chicago Students and Alums Respond to ‘Safe Space’ Letter 0
- Education
- August 25, 2016
John Ellison, dean of students at the University of Chicago, recently sent letters to incoming freshmen detailing the school’s commitment to academic freedom and inquiry. “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not
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Why is the Influence of Literary and Religious Figures Often Overlooked by Historians?0
- History
- August 25, 2016
In my last article, I lambasted the historians at National Geographic for their bias in the list of “the most influential figures of ancient history.” I asked why they favored secular rulers whose “influence” consisted of brute force and manipulation, i.e. military conquest and Machiavellian realpolitik. The National Geographic list was a litany of “mighty
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