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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
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Lewis and Sayers on a Liberal Education
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Monday Dec 28, 2020
The co-directors of the Wade center at Wheaton, Crystal and David Downing, discuss C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L Sayers's lifelong interest in the liberal arts. Both Christian intellectuals believed we had lost the type of education that forms human beings as thinkers with hearts.
Tuesday Dec 22, 2020
Finding Liberation in an Interdisciplinary Life
Tuesday Dec 22, 2020
Tuesday Dec 22, 2020
Rachel Griffis talks with Shann Ray about living an interdisciplinary life, the contributions of psychology to a liberal arts education, and his recent book Atomic Theory 7: Poems to My Wife and God. Shann is a Professor of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. Additionally, he is a licensed clinical psychologist as well as a poet, novelist, author of short stories, and a recipient of numerous awards in creative writing. He has also published scholarship on forgiveness and leadership studies
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
The New Atlantis: How Might Technology Work for Human Beings?
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
Jeff Bilbro talks with Ari Schulman, the editor of The New Atlantis, about how this magazine works to bridge some of the dangerous divides that mark our public discourse: the divide between STEM and the liberal arts, between experts and populists, between science and public policy. The also discuss the relation between journals like The New Atlantis and institutions of higher education.
Monday Dec 14, 2020
The Liberating Arts Winter Roundtable
Monday Dec 14, 2020
Monday Dec 14, 2020
Noah Toly talks with Jeff Bilbro, David Henreckson, and Jessica Hooten Wilson about what themes and questions have emerged so far from the conversations we've hosted at The Liberating Arts.
Wednesday Dec 02, 2020
The Liberal Arts in America
Wednesday Dec 02, 2020
Wednesday Dec 02, 2020
Dr. Rachel Griffis talks with Dr. Perry Glanzer, Professor of Educational Foundations at Baylor University, about the liberal arts tradition in American education and Glanzer’s book, Restoring the Soul of the University. They discuss the role of the liberal arts in the creation of American colleges, the fragmentation of the university, and possibilities for restoration in American institutions of higher education.
Monday Nov 30, 2020
Can the Humanities Find a Home in the Academy?
Monday Nov 30, 2020
Monday Nov 30, 2020
Brad East and Jon Baskin, editor for The Point Magazine, discuss the recent essay that Jon and Anastasia Berg wrote for the New York Times. They consider the crises facing the humanities and their institutional home in the academy; the goods and ends of humanistic education; the democratic potential of the liberal arts; the possibilities of humanistic education beyond the bounds of higher ed; and the role of ideas magazines in times of social upheaval and uncertainty.
Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
Should Liberal Arts Education Teach Us How to Die?
Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
Noah Toly hosts a discussion with Dr. Lydia Dugdale, author of The Lost Art of Dying, and Dr. Todd Billings, author of The End of the Christian Life, about ancient and Christian wisdom on death and dying, and how a liberal arts education might teach us about both.
Monday Nov 23, 2020
Monday Nov 23, 2020
Wednesday Nov 18, 2020
Why the Liberal Arts? Enduring Ideas in a Changing World
Wednesday Nov 18, 2020
Wednesday Nov 18, 2020
In this webinar hosted by The King's College, Dr. Joe Lonconte spoke on the history of higher education, Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson spoke on the goodness, truth, and beauty of teaching the Classics, and Dr. Zena Hitz spoke on the usefulness of “useless” arts during a pandemic and beyond. Dr. Josh Kinlaw then moderated the ensuing Q&A, which included discussions about the positive influence of classical learning on society.
In Dr. Hitz’s words, “Intellectual life, learning for its own sake, isn’t just the sort of crowning of all achievements… it’s also a refuge when we lose everything else - in failure, in imprisonment, in circumstances of terrible oppression, in decline, in despair of any kind, the liberal arts are there for us, in a way that nothing else is, apart from art, or music, or worship, or our love for one another.”
Monday Nov 16, 2020
Shifting Demographics and Liberal Arts Education
Monday Nov 16, 2020
Monday Nov 16, 2020
Noah Toly talks with Dr. Nathan Grawe, Professor of Economics and Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of Social Sciences at Carleton College, about how shifting demographics are affecting liberal arts institutions. Grawe is the author of Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). His current book project, The Agile College, examines the steps colleges and universities are taking to address the challenges of the next decade.