The university has no bookshop; the library eschews physical books; the learning designers condemn lectures; the managers forbid exams; the LLMs do the writing for students. Do we really need to ask why the bell tolls for the humanities?

It was great having @mark_bauerlein visit last week. His talk was titled "How the humanities lost its way," but I think it could have more accurately been called "The Humanities is AWESOME!...here's why" Photo credit to @hadleyonfire because I failed to take one.

The Hannah-Jones acknowledgment shows how far a mix of ideology + moral fervor can obscure the facts right before an intellectual's eyes. Now, we await her renunciation of the 1619 Project, whose curriculum is still in use in hundreds of schools.

Cell phones . . .

In 1970, English took 1-in-13 of all bachelor's degrees conferred.

The Odyssey is, in fact, a very American story, says Patrick Deneen on today's podcast: firstthings.com/odysseus-in-…

Professor Neil Gross on his new book on bias in higher ed, on today's podcast: firstthings.com/how-politics…

On their crusade against Western civilization in the Woke Era, Leftist professors debased its classic works. @RpwWilliams and @SpencerKlavan ask how AI now threatens to further undermine the humanities’ value and whether defending the liberal arts academy may be untenable.

Tomasi and VanderWeele have an idea: let universities be as ideological as they want, just be open about it, which is a satisfying notion in that the denial of ideological bias by academics is almost as annoying as the bias itself: washingtonpost.com/opinions/…

His Excellency Bishop Barron speaks personally and theologically about the great cathedrals of France, on today's podcast: firstthings.com/the-cathedra…

Summation on the "techlash" in schools by Rick Hess that raises a worrisome fact: lots of parents are quite happy with heavy screen time in class for their kids. The marketers in Silicon Valley did a helluva job. rickhessoneducation.substack…

As more evidence of the inferiority of screen-based reading to print surfaces, colleges are going with e-texts more than ever, as Kurtz reports here: nationalreview.com/corner/co…

At UT-Austin, "a student could fulfill all six hours of U.S. History and never study the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and other defining moments in the history of our country." news.utexas.edu/2026/08/13/n…

Professor Ralph Hancock on Christian and secular love, on today's podcast at First Things: firstthings.com/love-in-a-go…

Watch this film.

In his most recent piece, @mark_bauerlein rounds up several new books which offer old wisdom for navigating a world reshaped by digital novelty. Each book mentioned, in its own way, points back to virtue, courage, and faith as the antidote to the era's mounting distractions and pressures toward dehumanization. Read the full piece here: firstthings.com/old-wisdom-n…

On July 22, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it was investigating five medical schools for “alleged racial discrimination in admissions.” The only question is:  why those five? Absent strong proof to the contrary, it is a near-certainty that every medical school in the country has been employing racial preferences in admissions—favoring less qualified black applicants over more qualified white and Asian applicants, in order to racially balance their student body. Medical school administrators have been captured by diversity ideology, which holds that systemic racism is the reason why medical schools, absent racial preferences, would be overwhelmingly white and Asian.  In fact, the reason behind such lack of “diversity” is the wide gap in academic skills between so-called underrepresented minorities, on the one hand, and whites and Asians, on the other. While some schools may have lessened the degree of preference accorded black applicants since Trump’s anti-preference executive orders, it is doubtful that they have abandoned preferences altogether.  Determining whether they have is easily determined through admissions data: if blacks are admitted with lower MCAT’s and GPA’s than whites and Asians, the school employs preferences. This simple test is why the Trump requirements to supply admissions data to the federal government is essential to restoring meritocracy in medicine and in higher education more generally. ed.gov/about/news/press-rele…

More evidence that "thinking-skills" curricula don't hold up to scrutiny, and that knowledge-based curricula are the way: aei.org/research-products/re…