Here is Yonat Shimron at Religion News Service: Whitworth University, a Christian school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has revised its policies to allow for the hiring of LGBTQ faculty and to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination statement. […]
Archives for June 2023
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools sanctions Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
The sanctions are related to financial improprieties at the Southern Baptist seminary. (Remember Adam Greenway’s $11,000 espresso machine?) Here is Liam Adams at The Tennessean: An accreditor sanctioned Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on Wednesday, escalating an already dramatic saga marked […]
Report: Alliance University (Nyack College) will close
We have posted about the financial troubles of The Kings College. The Christian college is on the brink of closing. Kings is currently located in Manhattan, but from 1955-1994 it existed in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, New York. Nyack College […]
Commonplace Book #270
If you ask people only to pay attention–that is, to obey their super-egos all the time–they will almost inevitably resist. Attention is an imprisoning of the mind. If you don’t put attention to a higher purpose–one associated with absorption–the mind […]
Summertime in the city
I love Talia Levin’s writing (even when she over-writes it a little). Here’s some graphs from her How to Survive Midsummer in New York originally published in The Village Voice in 2018. I’ve never spent a summer in New York […]
Elite college prof: “affirmative action — though necessary — has inadvertently helped create a warped and race-obsessed American university culture”
Here is a taste of Tyler Austin Harper’s New York Times piece: “I Teach at an Elite College. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gaming of Admission.” Harper is a professor of environmental studies at Bates College. When I was […]
What is Bidenomics?
E.J. Dionne explains: President Biden might not seem like a revolutionary, but he is presiding over a fundamental change in the nation’s approach to economics. Not only is he proposing a major break from the “trickle-down” policies of Ronald Reagan, […]
Should academic departments have official positions on social and political issues?
Princeton historian David A. Bell thinks such official pronouncements are a mistake. Here is a taste of his piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education: Where does your English department stand on abortion rights? What does the School of Public […]
What is popular this week at Current?
Here are the most popular features of the week at Current: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Arena blog:
Ralph Reed’s Flip-Flop on Presidential “Character” and “Moral Leadership”
It seems Chris Christie now carries the mantle of the 1990s Christian Right
Reflections on Dorothy Sayers’ work, life, and lost motherhood
I first heard about Dorothy Sayers a little over a decade ago. Knowing of my appreciation for Agatha Christie mysteries, my now husband recommended Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels. I did not follow up on that recommendation at the time. A […]
Commonplace Book #269
A less persuasive argument [for the creation of ethnic and race studies programs at universities] is rooted in the psychologistic language of identity politics. The demand to see oneself in the text easily reduces to narcissistically anti-intellectual twaddle, as anyone […]
College president delivers a graduate speech crafted by ChatGPT
After delivering a ChatGTP graduation speech, Wells College (Aurora, NY) president Jonathan Gilbralter said: “Before I end this address, I have a confession to make. I want to let you know that everything I just said was written by artificial […]
On the evangelical postal worker case, Supreme Court tells a lower court to take another look
Amid all the discussion of affirmative action today, the Supreme Court also made a unanimous decision on a religious liberty case. Here is Ariane de Vougue and Tierney Sneed reporting on Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General: The Supreme Court revived […]
David Brooks makes an argument for class-based college admissions
Here is The New York Times columnist in the wake of the Supreme Court ending affirmative action today: We’ve been debating affirmative action since I was in diapers, and increasingly the Supreme Court has gotten into this issue, and now […]
Evangelical roundup for June 29, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? French evangelicals speak-out about attempts to remove Christian holidays. New faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Evangelical Olympics in Galicia. A new tool for worship bands. “We Will Rock You” as a Christian song. […]
Harry Potter sixteen years later
In 2007 I took a trip to the United Kingdom. Toward the end of the trip, I found myself in a small used bookstore in a quaint Scottish village. Needing something to read on the plane ride back, I spotted […]
Bringing Culture Wars to Campus
The university does not exist to generate talking points
Commonplace Book #268
At bottom, identity politics rests on problematic ideas of political authenticity and representation. These derive from the faulty premise that membership in a group gives access to a shared perspective and an intuitive understanding of the group’s collective interests. This […]
Not everyone at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference booed Chris Christie
Last weekend we called your attention to Chris Christie’s appearance at Ralph Reed’s Road to Majority. When the former New Jersey governor criticized Donald Trump’s leadership, the crowd booed. But Christie also had some fans in the pro-Trump stronghold. Here […]