Last year, John Fea wrote this encouraging post about the work of Upper House at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including historian Dan Hummel, its director of engagement (who will now have a new title and a new position there, come summer; in the meanwhile, check out his recent book and his book launch essay here at Current!).
Anyway, John was a speaker at last year’s Upper House end-of-year dialogue, and I remember reading his reflections last year and thinking, there is something really good happening here!
Funnily enough, two Current writers were invited to be part of this year’s dialogue (which took place exactly one week ago, last Wednesday): Contributing Editor Vincent Bacote and me. We were joined by Adam Nelson, a UW professor of history of education. We were asked to respond to the following question to jump-start the dialogue that continued for over two hours at the dinner tables and over dessert reception: What does higher education need at this time? This is an apt question as one academic year wraps up, and planning is well underway for the next one.
In his response, Vince Bacote focused on several key virtues to cultivate in ourselves and others around us. Then in my response, I argued that in this age of machines and technological advancement, higher education needs to treasure our humanity–what it means to be a person, with all the limits of a person, because these limits have a transcendent purpose too. Finally, Adam told a cautionary tale of free speech woes on a college campus. It sounded like he was reading the news, except it turned out that the events in questions were from… 1940s Czechoslovakia. It was a useful reminder that many problems we are dealing with are not unique to us. There is nothing new under the sun.
The conversations that followed were really wonderful and showed a real desire for such dialogues to continue. As thinking beings, we are not content (and rightly so) to just go along living our lives, but there is a real desire to talk about our experiences, what they mean, and how we wish they could be different.
Overall, I came away from this event convinced of the need for such organizations as Upper House, and particularly impressed with the work that Upper House is doing in cultivating the evangelical mind–and doing so while located literally across the street from an internationally renowned secular research university.