At least, that’s how it might feel for the next few weeks… Some explanation: Next January, for Bethel’s three-week “interim” term, I’ll be debuting a new course on the Second World War (HIS231L), designed to alternate J-terms with a long-standing class on the First World War (HIS230L) that I’ve converted into a travel course in … More WWII Takes Over The Pietist Schoolman
Earlier this summer I looked at how the members of the evangelical Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) fared in The Financially Sustainable University, a brief by Bain & Co. and Sterling Partners that has garnered significant attention (not all favorable). 32% of CCCU schools listed in that report were classified as “Financially Unsustainable” … More Eighteen Evangelical Colleges Earn a “D” for Finances
If you’re not a member of the American Historical Association (AHA), you might not have heard that our guild is in the middle of a fracas heated enough to have generated its own hashtag: #AHAgate. Or perhaps you have, since it attracted the attention of the New York Times on Monday. Quick version: nine days … More The Underquestioned Assumption at the Heart of #AHAgate
I just note an odd creeping "New York-centrism" amongst some Christians invested in "cultural engagement." — James K.A. Smith (@james_ka_smith) July 26, 2013 Are evangelicals committed to engaging with culture too focused on New York City? Like the first person to respond to Jamie Smith’s tweet noting “an odd creeping ‘New York-centrism,’” I immediately thought … More “New York-centrism” in Evangelical Cultural Engagement
Today The Chronicle of Higher Education published the results of its sixth annual Great Colleges to Work For survey. I don’t want to make too much of any college ranking system (this year, I mean — did plenty of it in 2012…), let alone one in which only 300 colleges and universities took part. But … More Great (Christian) Colleges to Work For 2013
I’ve blogged a couple of times about The King’s College (TKC), the conservative Christian school in Manhattan: in August 2011, contrasting the way that its then-president, Dinesh D’Souza, and long-time Bethel president Carl Lundquist talked about evangelical social and political engagement; and then in December 2012, asking if D’Souza’s resignation from TKC signaled evangelical depoliticization. … More Gregory Thornbury Named President of The King’s College
I fear that those of us who teach history, literature, philosophy, languages, etc. too often tend to say “the liberal arts” when we really mean “the humanities” — forgetting that the latter is only one set of disciplines within the former. I’m as guilty as anyone. A long time ago, I imprecisely used the tag … More The Sciences as Liberal Arts
A brief follow-up to Tuesday’s post, “The Humanities in Crisis, or Not“… Historian Ben Schmidt (by way of journalist Jordan Weissmann) argued that any fear that the humanities (history, philosophy, literature, languages) are in crisis should be tempered by the reality that (aside from an outlying boom that peaked in 1966) those disciplines have about … More Curriculum and the Health of the Humanities
“Higher education in the United States is at a tipping point.” So conclude Jeff Denneen and Tom Dretler in their 2012 paper, “The financially sustainable university” — one in a series of “Bain Briefs,” as it was produced by Bain & Co., with Sterling Partners (management consulting and private equity firms, respectively). Noting some of … More How Financially Sustainable Are Christian Colleges?
Last week was a great-horrible week for those of us who teach fields like history, philosophy, languages, and literature (hereafter, “the humanities”) and wanted to be reminded (a) how essential we are and (b) how much of a crisis we’re in. Among other happenings, the New York Times published a column by David Brooks lamenting … More The Humanities in Crisis, or Not
The Pietist Schoolman 