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 ..read more

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 ..read more

Prof. Eric Adler and Jessica Hooten Wilson discuss his book Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today in conversation with Reitter and Wellmon's The Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age. Adler creates a lengthier narrative of the humanities that predates the modern version and shows how rooting the identity of the humanities in this story encourages a return to their humanizing character ..read more

Founding Presidents John Mark Reynolds, Stephen Blackwood, and Matthew Smith tell us about why they started colleges from scratch and what gap in the academy they hope to fill. As President Blackwood put it, why keep living in a house with a broken foundation? We need to start over ..read more

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.  ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more