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COVID-19 has been apocalyptic for higher education, and indeed for our nation as a whole; it has intensified pressures already threatening liberal arts education. Our conversations aim to enable colleges and universities across the country to learn from one another in addressing today's challenges and opportunities, and they will encourage these institutions to draw on the rich heritage of the liberal arts tradition, while acknowledging its historical limitations, in shaping their responses. Our goal is to think and talk in public about the enduring value of the liberal arts for the particular concerns and challenges of our time.
Episodes
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Against a System that Has Lost its Liberating Arts
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Myles Werntz is Director of Baptist Studies and Associate Professor of Theology at Abilene Christian University. With Jessica Hooten Wilson, the two discuss Ivan Illich's scandalous 1971 Deschooling Society. The book argues that mass-enforced public schooling trains students more into producers and automatons than into creative, interdependent learners. Distinguishing between school and education, Illich claims the latter must be done with relational and tangible means, such as the tools of the liberal arts, rather than institutionalized grading and ranking.
Monday Dec 06, 2021
The Lyceum Movement
Monday Dec 06, 2021
Monday Dec 06, 2021
Jeff Bilbro talks with Nathan Beacom about the history--and revival--of the Lyceum. Nathan is directing a project whose mission is to "build meaningful communities by providing a space for neighbors to learn together in friendship. The Lyceum offers classes, events, and a shared space to explore great ideas, great deeds, great art, and the questions that affect our life together. In so doing, it seeks to shape citizens and communities well-formed in self-government for the common good." He and Jeff talk about how these events might form their participants intellectually and socially.
Saturday Nov 27, 2021
How to Fix the Permanent Crisis in the Humanities
Saturday Nov 27, 2021
Saturday Nov 27, 2021
Tuesday Nov 02, 2021
Let‘s start new liberal arts colleges!
Tuesday Nov 02, 2021
Tuesday Nov 02, 2021
Thursday Aug 12, 2021
Thinking Outside the Box with Andy Crouch
Thursday Aug 12, 2021
Thursday Aug 12, 2021
Andy Crouch is on the CCCU governing board. In this conversation, he discusses with Jessica Hooten Wilson ways we might innovate to increase the love of liberal arts from children to adults.
Saturday Jun 19, 2021
Liberal Arts and Agricultural Arts
Saturday Jun 19, 2021
Saturday Jun 19, 2021
Jeff Bilbro talks with Leah Bayens, the dean of the Wendell Berry Farming Program. This program is a collaboration between Sterling College and the Berry Center. Dr. Bayens's PhD is in English, and she has wide-ranging interests in both the humanities and sustainable agriculture. They talk about the program she directs and the challenges and opportunities of uniting liberal arts education with agricultural education.
Sunday May 02, 2021
Thinking and Leading with Generosity
Sunday May 02, 2021
Sunday May 02, 2021
Jeff Bilbro talks with Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University. She has also held leadership roles for the MLA, and she is the project director of Humanities Commons. They discuss her recent book Generous Thinking and her current project, available in draft form on her website, Leading Generously.
Monday Apr 26, 2021
The Humanities' Permanent Crisis
Monday Apr 26, 2021
Monday Apr 26, 2021
Jeff Bilbro talks with Chad Wellmon about the arguments in a new book that Chad wrote with Paul Reitter, Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age. They discuss questions such as: Where did the humanities come from? Why do they always seem to be in crisis? Can we find a hospitable institutional home for humane learning?
Monday Apr 19, 2021
Learning from First-Generation Student-Leaders
Monday Apr 19, 2021
Monday Apr 19, 2021
Noah Toly talks with Tim Herron and Marquise Dixon, of Degrees of Change and Act Six, about how institutions can better serve first-generation student-leaders.
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
Leisure and the Academic Life
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
Rachel Griffis talks with theologian Elizabeth Newman about the importance of leisure in academic study. They discuss the academy’s prioritization of productivity, scarcity mindsets vs. mindsets of abundance, and monastic time. Elizabeth is the author of Divine Abundance: Leisure, the Basis of Academic Culture and Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers.