Rounding up the antisocial century, the airport piano tuner, the only Jewish resident in Oświęcim, Reading Genesis, and family and parenting.
Archives for January 2025
Commonplace Book #323
“…Humanities departments have withered over the past two decades: smaller classes, fewer majors, and a shrinking faculty. A debacle. In part, it is owed to students voting with their feet: they think the jobs are elsewhere, so they gravitate to […]
Weekend Dad and Us Girls
When childhood moves at the speed of light, the family dinner is essentialÂ
Ibram X. Kendi moves to Howard University. His Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University is closing.
Here is BU Today: Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research (CAR), says he has decided to leave BU to join Howard University in Washington, DC. CAR will close when its charter with the University […]
David French: “Trump’s cure for D.E.I. isn’t a true meritocracy, but rather affirmative action for the MAGA movement.”
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I am often critical of some of the stuff associated with the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” industry. (See, for example, recent Commonplace Book entries on Musa Al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been […]
The Author’s Corner with Richard Carwardine
Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. This interview is based on his new book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Knopf, […]
Commonplace Book #322
It can be a pleasure to learn from the Internet, but you best have acquired your basic knowledge from something that is not the Internet. A book is a good idea; five hundred (good) books is better. If you do […]
State, Market, Speech
TikTok ticks right along
The Author’s Corner with Jeffrey Boutwell
Jeffrey Boutwell is a retired independent historian with a B.A. in History from Yale and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This interview is based on his new book, Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of […]
We are more than a week into the second Trump presidency. What are evangelicals saying?
The members of the Evangelical Immigrant Roundtable urge the Trump administration to respect religious freedom. Quotes from the leaders of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, World Relief, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. […]
Commonplace Book #321
How then, do you distinguish the sane members of the leftist tribe from the whackos? You start to recognize both versions–the sane and the pathological–by their voices. The sane speak with self-awareness and usually some self-doubt. Irony infuses what they […]
REVIEW: The Beechers
America’s ‘most influential family’ had troubles familiar to most of us today
GOP House members submit resolution condemning Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde’s National Prayer Service sermon
Not familiar with this story? Get up to speed here. Some members of the House of Representatives were so upset with Budde’s sermon urging Trump to consider the human dignity of immigrants and members of the transgender community that they […]
World Relief responds to Trump executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program
In case you missed it, on January 20, 2025, the day he was inaugurated as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program beginning January 27, 2025. World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National […]
The Author’s Corner with Eran A. Zelnik
Eran A. Zelnik is a Lecturer in the Department of History at California State University, Chico. This interview is based on his new book, American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man’s Democracy, 1750–1850 (Johns Hopkins […]
Christians Reading Classics is coming this fall–and a brief Arena break this week
How might Christians read Greco-Roman literature as Christians?
Commonplace Book #320
When we analyze how systems and institutions operate in concrete terms rather than just waving our hands at ‘”the system,” “history,’” or related abstractions, we can see that inequalities within institutions tend to be produced and sustained by everyday practices […]
REVIEW: Our Nazi
A past failure of moral judgment sounds an alert today
It’s complicated: Malcolm Gladwell
If it was baseball, Malcolm Gladwell would be a really reliable hitter.
The Shadow of Auschwitz
The Holocaust continues—as it must—to haunt