SamuelGoldman retweeted
I also take on @SWGoldman's argument that the Great Books approach doesn't have to be great, just better (for almsot all undergrads, it isn't better, because it misunderstands the place of college in the process of education).
I answer @lukeburgis's question about the limits of the Great Books approach
jamesgmartin.center/2026/08/…
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SamuelGoldman retweeted
A great opportunity. Also, apparently one of the few chances grad students will get to see @SWGoldman in the wild without a jacket.
ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITY🙋♀️ 📖👨🎓@tikvahfund invites applicants for its 2026-27 Academic Fellowship. Doctoral candidates & recent PhDs pursuing research in Jewish texts/ideas/history, etc. are encouraged to apply. The application deadline is September 1. buff.ly/0JeS0MH
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Different objection: has the status of any modern intellectual/literary figure declined more sharply than Freud’s? Consisted one of the greats in the mid 20th C, now of almost solely historical interest.
The absence of Vergil, the greatest epic poem in the Western tradition, screams either a bottomless ignorance or something much worse.
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The existential question for the academic humanities is: why should the public (both individually and collectively) give us money to do this? They're the ones who get to decide on our future. And they will.
Increasingly, academics—particularly humanists—remind me of addicts who refuse to admit they have a problem: they’ve lost their spouse and kids, no one trusts them anymore, but they think everything would be fine if people just stopped spreading rumors about their bad behavior.
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People read (or didn’t read) a lot of junk in the ‘50s. But we’re still dumber.
Before you panic about that Atlantic article on the end of reading, it’s worth considering what Horowitch is vaunting as our literary pinnacle. It ain’t what she shows. 👉 millersbookreview.com/p/befo…
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I've been trying for hours to think of a good joke about Spain conquering France but I got nothing.
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This is a big part of discontent with higher ed...and the broader issue of downward mobility among highly credentialed youngish people.
Upper-middle-class families are in a weird dead zone with college.
They make too much to qualify for meaningful financial aid, but not enough to casually write $100,000 checks every year without it completely changing their life.
So the kid looks rich on paper, gets little help, and the parents are expected to absorb the cost of a house down payment every single year.
College pricing has also obviously become absurd.
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Robert Nozick joked that normative sociology is the study of what the causes of social problems should be. Normative gen ed is the study of what the sources of history and culture should be.
"At @UNC last year, I said that the King James Bible should be a core topic, if only as a fact of historical influence. The response was unsurprising: Why not the Quran, too? When I answered that the book had nothing to do with our history and culture until the very recent present, some walked out."
@mark_bauerlein: Gen Ed Is a Joke at Most Schools wsj.com/opinion/free-express… via @WSJFreeEx
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People can argue about the main causes and proper responses, but the claim that there’s nothing to see here is simply not tenable.
Public trust in higher education continues to fall.
This year's Gallup survey of higher ed shows that the decline in trust is also bipartisan.
Distrust is now almost as high among people who went to college as among those who did not.
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There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
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SamuelGoldman retweeted
Once you've been a dean and you go back and watch Jurassic Park all you can think of is: who processed Alan Grant's travel vouchers? Was this paid leave? Did Ellie Sattler sign the appropriate waivers as a grad student? Who logged her work hours into the system?
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By me, for you—a defense of America’s mixed up but essential civil religion. links.washingtonpost.com/s/v…
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Needs more taxidermy
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