My university, Boston College, has developed an insightful new document describing what we hold dear in our core curriculum. Full disclosure: this post is cheerleading because I think we’ve got it right. And no, that title does not contain a typo. More below. (Aside: this document is in the public view: see stories here and here.) It observes that Jesuit education from the 16th century onwards tried to balance the ideals of the university as the center of new thinking... Read more
*Update: see the bottom of this page. One of the dreadful dead-ends of the modern university is the conceit that science alone is pure knowledge, whereas the slushy humanities disciplines that were at the heart of the premodern university are merely opinions. Yet in this era informed by various histories of scientific thought such as Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it is now possible to see all disciplines as ways that human beings seek to understand the world they live... Read more
Theologian Aurelie Hagstrom writes in Integritas: I think it is vitally important to remember that mere “tolerance” is not true dialogue. Hospitality is much more engaging, risky, and costly than the mere tolerance of diversity is. Mere tolerance cannot sustain our communities or our conversations in moments of crisis or deep disagreement. Hospitality, by contrast, is incarnational. It does not exist as a disembodied attitude toward others, like tolerance, but is instead a practice of bringing strangers and guests into... Read more
The California State university system has derecognized InterVarsity, a Christian organization, on its 23 campuses. HuffPo: California State University, which has 23 campuses, is “de-recognizing” local chapters of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical Christian group with 860 chapters in the United States. The university system says InterVarsity’s leadership policy conflicts with its state-mandated nondiscrimination policy requiring membership and leadership in all official student groups be open to all. and later The challenges stem from a 2010 Supreme Court decision that ruled a... Read more
David Brooks’ piece on the state of universities today is spot-on, if perhaps (at least to me) rather obvious. He comments on the New Republic‘s most-read article in its history: a piece by former Yale professor William Deresiewicz entitled “Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League,” which laments the mill we send our best and brightest through. Here’s Deresiewicz: Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid,... Read more
What’s the value of a college degree? College grads have an average debt burden of $33,000 after graduating. Is college a ludicrous waste of money? Perhaps, if you measure it by what happens a year or two after graduation. But the long-term data says otherwise: according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the value of a bachelor’s degree is near an all-time high. But surely those data reflect the sexy STEM or business majors of today! Aren’t the Humanities... Read more
My Boston College colleague Richard Kearney has written a thoughtful piece in the New York Times, “Losing our Touch.” He laments the loss of physicality, of the body, in the collective consciousness of our society. Are we perhaps entering an age of “excarnation,” where we obsess about the body in increasingly disembodied ways? For if incarnation is the image become flesh, excarnation is flesh become image. Incarnation invests flesh; excarnation divests it. Among students, sex is increasingly mediated by the virtual... Read more
I would assert quite simply that the final test of the civilizing process that is liberal education is to be found more accurately in the quality of choices one makes during life than in evidence of purely intellectual attainments. The specific purpose of such a liberal education should be to enable persons, to the extent that formal education can do so, to make sound human decisions affecting both personal lives and social policies. J. Donald Monan, Chancellor of Boston College... Read more
The US Bishops are convening a group of bishops and Catholic college presidents to review Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the apostolic constitution of John Paul II on Catholic universities (1990). From the Cardinal Newman Society: Barbara McCrabb, assistant director for higher education in the USCCB’s education office, said that the working group of presidents and bishops will discuss topics that emerged from the 2011 ten-year review of The Application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae for the United States. A previous working group... Read more
Let me share with you a taste of what gets me excited about my work in a Catholic university, as a way of suggesting the direction of this blog. For the moment, if you’re unfamiliar with either Catholicism or the actual life of a university, please suspend your disbelief. I have found that pop culture knows little of either institution. (Monolithic, ivory tower, hierarchical, brain-washing, yada yada). Similarly, if you are Catholic, or if you do know university life, please... Read more
The Capstone
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