In academia, one of the most derogatory comments one can make about a colleague is to label them a “popularizer.” This is pretty much akin to being labeled a Democrat on FOX News. The irony, of course, is that almost all scholars are engaged in the profession of teaching which is, by its very nature,…
FYI for locals: I’ll be reading my first-ever published poem (“The Temptation of Icicles”) as part of the Literary Life Chapbook Celebration, an event to launch the chapbook of select poems from their First Annual Poetry Contest. Here are the details: LITERARY LIFE CHAPBOOK CELEBRATION Wednesday, May 27th, at 7pm As you may remember, we…
Some Fors Clavigera readers might be interested in a new little article of mine just published by the good folks at Catapult magazine: “Abundance for All: What’s Right with the Prosperity Gospel?.” It’s part of an issue devoted to “Life Abundant.” This piece began it’s life as a chapel talk at Calvin College in a…
David Brooks meditation today on filmmaker, John Ford, is worth a read. As he rightly notes, Ford’s “westerns” are not about the rugged individualism that has captured the Ayn-Randish imaginations of the Republican party. As Brooks comments, the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different story. Ford’s movies…
Since we’ve been thinking about the end of philosophy (and the end of the university), it might be appropriate to note a book about the end of philosophers: Simon Critchley’s The Book of Dead Philosophers–a compendium of the deaths (and lives) of 190 philosophers, from the Pre-Socratics to relative contemporaries like Jacques Derrida and Dominique…
The New York Times op-ed page is becoming rather apocalyptic. First we had David Brooks’ pontificating on the “End of Philosophy;” now the NYT offers an op-ed from Mark C. Taylor on “The End of the University As We Know It.” Any undergraduate contemplating graduate education shouldn’t be surprised by Taylor’s sobering take on the…