Today The Atlantic is running a fascinating piece by Andrew Ferguson on researching Nixon’s marginalia. Here is a taste: Call it coincidence, serendipity, an aligning of the planets—whatever the term, the moment was creepy and amusing all at once. I […]
Archives for 2023
Trump’s pro-Unionism and changes on abortion show an “eagerness to win even at the expense of ideological consistency”
Here is Ross Douthat at The New York Times: In the last week, the man whose judicial appointees overturned Roe v. Wade and whose administration was reliably hostile to unions has condemned the six-week abortion ban signed by DeSantis, promised […]
“You’re nobody until somebody hates you”
I am looking forward to seeing Richard Dewey’s film, Radical Wolfe: Journalist, Satirist, Iconoclast. In the meantime, here is a taste of John Tierney’s review at City Journal: Wolfe went on writing in his inimitable voice for the Herald Tribune Sunday supplement, […]
The Author’s Corner with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is an instructor at the University of New Orleans and an IUPUI-SUSIH Community Scholar. This interview is based on her new book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America (University of North […]
FORUM: What Does Higher Education Need Now? Part One
This is one crisis that must not go to waste
No, Donny, these men are nihilists
Are we a pagan people? There seems to be an upsurge in concern, in some cases celebration, that Western culture in general and perhaps the United States in particular may be experiencing a repaganization. There is an online doofus, whose […]
Prolifers are outraged about Trump’s abortion comments on “Meet the Press”
I wrote yesterday: Essentially, Trump is throwing the pro-life movement under the bus. He and his team believe that they can win in 2024 with a more moderate pro-life view on abortion. To put this more crudely, pro-life conservative evangelicals […]
The Author’s Corner with Michael McCulloch
Michael McCulloch is Associate Professor of Architecture and Master of Architecture Program Chair at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University. This interview is based on his new book, Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early-Twentieth Century […]
REVIEW: The Liberal Arts as Dare
Can we make good on the ancient promise of freedom?
Utilitarianism, higher education, and pricing human life
Recently, my eight-year-old son has become mildly obsessed with the nineteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Inspiring my son to write his own illustrated last will and testament, upon his death Bentham bequeathed his body to science, requesting that following a […]
Will evangelicals turn on Trump after his “Meet the Press” abortion comments?
The evangelicals and politics angle to the 2024 election just got more interesting! Essentially, Trump is throwing the pro-life movement under the bus. He and his team believe that they can win in 2024 with a more moderate pro-life view […]
“And Pharaoh hardened his heart”: Will Donald Trump’s abortion claims on “Meet the Press” open a new lane for Ron DeSantis?
During the August 2023 GOP presidential debate, Nikki Haley said that Americans “need to stop demonizing” the issue of abortion. Watch: Most conservative evangelicals I know side with Pence in this debate. Haley repeated this argument over the weekend at […]
A Prayer before Study
Creator of all things,true Source of light and wisdom,lofty origin of all being,graciously let a ray of Your brilliancepenetrate into the darkness of my understandingand take from me the double darknessin which I have been born,an obscurity of both sin […]
The Author’s Corner with Peter Thompson
Peter Thompson is Sydney L Mayer Associate Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. This interview is based on his new book, Heir through Hope: Thomas Jefferson’s Lifelong Investment in William Short (Oxford University Press, 2023). JF: What […]
Evangelical roundup for September 18, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? The splintering of Canadian Reformed evangelicalism. DeSantis continues to try to make a dent in Trump’s support among evangelicals. Rhyne Putnam reviews Thomas McCall, The Doctrine of Good Works: Reclaiming a Neglected Protestant Teaching. […]
LONG FORM: Remembering the University’s Mission
The theater of the absurd has moved from the stage to the quad. Must it stay?
A common fund of knowledge
This essay was originally published in February 2023. In conjunction with the forum on higher education that is taking place at Current this week, we are re-running it, as it addresses a topic significant for conversations about education right now. […]
Fact-checking Trump on “Meet the Press”
In case you missed it, NBC News journalist Kristen Welker began her new gig as host of the “Meet the Press” with a Donald Trump interview. This morning NBC News published a piece fact-checking Trump: “Former President Donald Trump made […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: The current state of the academic history job market. Right-wing House Republican Ken Buck will not go along with McCarthy’s impeachment plans. David French on the battle over abortion. Drew […]
Os Guinness keeps pushing his faulty American Revolution vs. French Revolution thesis
Watch Christian commentator and author Os Guinness at the Family Research Council’s “Pray Vote Stand Summit”: Guinness sounds like an old Federalist–a defender of order. He, of course, is free to take such a position. But his view of the […]