We’ve now finished the first two weeks of the fall semester at Bethel University, where there’s no football opener tomorrow, only a handful of people could be in the Great Hall for a chapel service saying farewell to our president emeritus, and I still forget my face mask half the time I head to work. … More Two Weeks In and…
This week I wrote a letter to my students about the coming fall, recorded a podcast about sports under COVID, and introduced readers to a Lindbergh biographer who never got to finish her book. Elsewhere: • I’m worried that masks are going to make it harder for my students and me to get to know … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I considered the importance of Christian friendships between women and men and shared a bit more about the origins of our Faith and History devotional. (Click that link to learn how to pre-order with a publisher’s discount.) Elsewhere: • We’re now less than a month away from starting face-to-face classes at Bethel… I hope someone’s … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I started turning my attention to a fall semester unlike any other, researching reopening plans for schools like Bethel and thinking through how I’ll teach two of my courses in a “modified face-to-face” format. Then over at The Anxious Bench, the story of Bethel’s first student of color provided bookends for a review … More That Was The Week That Was
The weeks before I first took students to Europe for a travel course, I often woke up in the middle of the night, unable to stop thinking about our plans — and what would happen when the plans went awry. The same thing has been happening in recent days, as we get closer and closer … More How I’m Planning to Teach This Fall
Apart from sharing the news of our history devotional that’s coming out in December, it was a quiet blogging week for me, as I moved into the last stages of writing my Lindbergh manuscript. Elsewhere: • #EverythingHasAHistory, including protests at historic sites. • On the same day, Princeton announces that it’s dropping Woodrow Wilson’s name … More That Was The Week That Was
On the 2019-20 season finale of The 252, Chris Moore and I reflected on what we learned from our first time teaching History and Politics of Sports at Bethel. Then Sam Mulberry joined us to talk about how different professional and college sports are planning to resume play — or already have done so. We talked about everything … More Thursday’s Podcast: The Return of Sports (?)
Last night word spread that one of the nation’s two largest Christian universities had eliminated its entire Philosophy department, giving those seven professors just a few weeks’ notice for a June 30 end to their employment. Sad as that news is, neither the decision nor the means of announcing and implementing it can be all … More Hope for Better Times for the Humanities
This week I finished another chapter in my Lindbergh biography and recorded podcasts about the Olympics and the importance of philosophy in a time of pandemic. Elsewhere: • I was doubly grateful to Elesha Coffman: not just for giving me a week off at The Anxious Bench, but articulating something about teaching online that I’d struggled … More That Was The Week That Was
If nothing else, this is a wonderful time for all of us to catch up on our reading. To that end, let me encourage you to check out the April e-book sale at Eerdmans, which has discounted 300+ titles to prices as low as $1.99. (Most are under $4.) The sale runs through the end … More Time to Load Up on E-Books
The Pietist Schoolman 