In a recent open letter, the Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression say: In recent years, colleges and universities have increasingly weighed in on social and political issues. This has led our institutions of higher education to become politicized and has created an untenable situation whereby they are […]
Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels (1979) hardly needs a review from me. It won the National Book Award and has been listed among the 100 most influential works of the 20th century. However, I hadn’t read it until lately, and I can recommend it with the following summary. Pagels classifies early Christians into two large […]
Dates: June 13 (5pm) until June 15 (1 pm) at Tufts University in Medford, MA Frontiers of Democracy an annual conference at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life that convenes practitioners and scholars from across the United States and overseas. Please hold the dates (June 13-15), register and purchase tickets at the “early bird” discount rate until […]
In July 2020, I wrote a post showing that the proportions of Americans who thought that several types of controversial speakers should be allowed to talk in their own communities generally increased between the 1970s and 2010s. The categories of speakers mentioned in the General Social Survey have been gay people, opponents of “churches and […]
Prominent people like Cass Sunstein and Samuel Moyn are publishing manifestos for–or at least about–liberalism, evidently responding to heightened critiques from both right and left. The word “liberalism” has many meanings and is applied retrospectively to authors who lived before it was even coined; therefore, it lacks a clear and detailed definition. Instead, it names […]