What is the West? Stepping onto most college campuses today, it is something to be reviled rather than defined. The Italian scholastic Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) is often most credited with arguing for a harmony of human reason and divine revelation as leading to truth, and the use of reason in approaching divine texts. Revelation […]
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Much of the global press is engaged in broad speculation over how Iran will respond to the United States’ recent bombing of its nuclear facilities. Coverage includes warnings about potential domestic fallout and calls for heightened vigilance against possible retaliation by Iranian “sleeper cells” already within the U.S. This overlooks, however, that mainstream partisan political […]
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Author’s Note: This article is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every week. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site. In 2011, the […]
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As a history PhD, I’m used to hearing that I should have studied STEM (science, technology, engineering, or math) instead. We humanities graduates often retort that our skills are underappreciated, but our arguments ring hollow in the face of a difficult job market. Facing this reality, ambitious students rapidly abandoned arts majors throughout the 2000s, […]
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Last week in RealClearEducation, Kenin M. Spivak argued that while Columbia University’s leadership and commencement ceremonies showcase a deep embrace of leftist ideology, student activism remains largely performative. Reflecting on his experience as both alumnus and guest at this year’s graduation, Spivak says that despite the dominance of DEI rhetoric and the praise for progressive […]
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“We can’t hold them. The city is lost.” “Tell the men to break cover. We ride for Minas Tirith.” So Faramir, captain of Gondor and son of the steward, says to his lieutenant during the battle of Osgiliath. It is a pivotal scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that […]
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The world has entered a new era of Great Power competition, where civilizational and regional blocks are coalescing to create large spaces of economic, trade, and military influence. Leaders and experts worldwide have termed this the new era of multipolarity. The political, economic, and technological systems of the West have been hybridized and fused by […]
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I would have thought that one of the primary jobs of our universities would be to conserve and explore the great works of Western Civilization, and, further, to introduce these great works to students. But five decades of teaching and research at one of North America’s great universities have disabused me of such imaginings. Western […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Docement Productions on January 10. 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Can Western civilization survive? One wonders. It is mostly the small things that fuel the disquiet. An illegal immigrant sets a woman on the F train […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Anchoring Truths. Anchoring Truths is the online journal of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Western society faces unprecedented social turmoil. This situation has arisen primarily through the […]
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Americans always have drawn upon the history and the greatest books of Western civilization to inspire them to their greatest words and deeds. Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address echoed the medieval church reformer John Wycliffe when he spoke of government of the people, for the people and by the people. George Patton became the […]
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