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Look what's arrived in the mail, dear reader. It's my author's copies of *Humanistic Letters: The Irving Babbitt - Paul Elmer More Correspondence*, which will be officially released on Sept. 15!
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Eric Adler
3.1K posts
Eric Adler
@ProfEricAdler
Professor of Classics @UofMaryland; interested in humanism, classics, higher education, and jazz. RTs ≠ endorsements. New book: https://t.co/mkDLmJUFxo
Kensington, MD Katılım Aralık 2017
475 Takip Edilen2K Takipçiler
Problems with the elective system, example number 3,457.
Jason Locasale@LocasaleLab
Universities have adopted a retail model. Students are customers, and professors are service providers. In that system, anonymous evaluations are just one piece. A single complaint can derail a professor’s career. That fundamentally changes behavior. Universities claim to uphold academic freedom and free speech, but those principles are often set aside as soon as there is any concern about the institution’s bottom line. Until that changes, rigor and standards will remain impossible to enforce.
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What does “critical thinking” mean? Is there a kind of uncritical thinking? A kind of mindless thinking?
If not, “critical thinking” merely means “thinking.”
Tom Bennett OBE@tombennett71
You cannot teach critical thinking. You can teach domain specific expertise, which enables you to think critically about that domain. Brilliant chess players do not make great military commanders. More problematically, people who think they have great critical thinking skills are often the ones who get hoodwinked by any fashionable idea, because they lack the domain expertise to interrogate nonsense.
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@nishanciefendi @AntigoneJournal The editorial was not a major reason for the protest. Luck was dis-accepting articles previously accepted by his predecessor at the journal. The controversy was misconstrued for years.
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this was the offending editorial referenced in the book? A mild statement of the journal’s priorities?
Antigone Journal@AntigoneJournal
Larks aplenty!
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@AntigoneJournal You may be interested in my article (later turned into a book chapter) on this editorial and the reaction to it: jstor.org/stable/24699888
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I read the offending AJP editorial of 1987, by the great Georg Luck, and it is one of the most innocuous things I have ever read. Anyway latter page of contents here:
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This book, its candid introductions, and its chaotic contents is a tragicomic masterpiece.
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@JoshHochschild Well, Norton was discussing Harvard, which was at least nominally Unitarian. I don’t think he saw that as incompatible with a liberal institution.
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@ProfEricAdler A 19th C delusion. The irony of history, before and after, is that Christian (and especially Catholic) institutions have a better record of treating all students equally and of fostering liberal learning than secular institutions.
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"In order to provide a liberal education, the term liberal must apply in the fullest sense to the institution itself. This must be free from every bond of party or sect, open upon equal terms to all students of whatever race or social position.”
--Charles Eliot Norton (1890)
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“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments.”
—Lord Byron
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“The end and aim of all literature is, if one considers it attentively, nothing but that: a criticism of life.”
—Matthew Arnold
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"Now whatever may be the historical or sociological explanation, the subjects that are usually regarded as humane...—literature, language, fine arts, and sometimes history—have come to be regarded as subjects for women.”
--Rollo Walter Brown (1924), "Coeducation vs. Literature"
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Eric Adler retweetledi
I’m delighted to be delivering the 9th annual Adams Lecture in the Public Humanities at UNC on April 17th, “First Among Equals: Redeeming Equality as a Political Ideal.”
Details at the link:
philosophy.unc.edu/event/the-nint…
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"The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such...."
--William James
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@lsheahan @JamesWHankins1 At UMD, it's a mixed bag. Courses in English are booming; they all satisfy gen-ed requirements and are almost always full. But there is no institutional support for language study, so Latin and Greek have low enrollments.
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I think study of the classics is on an upswing in K-12 classical schools. I don't know what the numbers are in university classics depts. Maybe somebody out there knows?
Paul Leach@PaulLeach51
@JamesWHankins1 No wonder no one wants to study classics anymore.
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It gives us great pleasure to announces that @GregMcBrayer3 is now with @miamiuniversity.
Join us in congratulating him on his new position as Assoc. Dir. and Professor of the Miami University Center for Civics, Culture and Society.
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"We haven’t sought for Classics as a discipline to change its fundamental character or to cease its work entirely. We haven’t written any piece targeted against anyone. We haven’t been motivated by resentment, cynicism or self-loathing."
Congrats to @AntigoneJournal!
Antigone Journal@AntigoneJournal
This weekend the Antigone project turned five! Here's Editor-in-chief David Butterfield to tell the brief history of our first half decade, which has really been quite the ride since those strange years of 2020-21. antigonejournal.com/2026/03/five-y…
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“By exposing students to a tradition of ideas, without didactically promoting one over the others, the teacher seems to be tending to the obligations of liberal learning.”
—Bob Pepperman Taylor (2025)
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A prime goal of humanistic study should surround an inquiry into human nature. Students should read profound humanistic writings and come to their own conclusions on the subject.
One cannot do this if the concept of human nature is dismissed out of hand.
Tyler Austin Harper@Tyler_A_Harper
This is excellent, especially the point below. As I’ve written before, I think it’s desperately important for the left and liberals to rehabilitate the idea of human nature and not reflexively eye roll at accumulated, traditional human wisdom as if it’s all mere superstition.
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Save up your pennies, people. Another magnum opus from the inimitable @tmbejan is about to hit the shelves!
It looks very, very interesting.
Teresa M. Bejan@tmbejan
Excited to see this out in the world! hup.harvard.edu/books/97806742…
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“Having nothing to teach, we have discussed chiefly methods of teaching.”
—Alexander Meiklejohn (1942)
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“When a focus on method replaces a focus on content, we are moving down the road to the science of administering education, rather than cultivating the humane art of teaching.”
—Bob Pepperman Taylor (2025)
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