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From the NOR Dossiers

Higher Education

Re-emergence in a Surprising Field
December 2020The mental-health professions in recent years have changed their opinion of religion and now regard faith as a reliable predictor of well-being.
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The Practical Application of Christian Ethics According to America’s Early College Presidents
November 2020They represented a variety of denominations but expressed a remarkably similar prescription for living spiritually in the wider world.
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Fr. Ted’s Big Trade
May 2020Hesburgh departed from the idea of creating a distinctive institution in the Catholic intellectual tradition, settling instead for making it more American and worldly.
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The Ideology at the Root of Our Moral Disorder
December 2019In the sociological imagination, it is man who creates God. Once he frees himself from God, anything is possible, or at least appears to be.
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Remembering John Lukacs
November 2019Lukacs had rock-solid confidence in the Western idea of truth for which books stand and without which civility cannot exist.
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Post-Truth, Climate Change & the Catholic University
October 2019As the earth was created before man, Pope Francis advises, man is obliged to treat the earth in a manner that is “caring, protecting, overseeing, and preserving.”
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Halving & Having the Truth
September 2019Through the joys and perils of liberal learning we must ever recollect that only faith seeking understanding properly disposes the intellect toward conformity to Christ.
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Seeking Knowledge of God through the Experience of Beauty
September 2019Education must do what the word itself promises: lead out, via a pattern, a road. In other words, simply and finally, education must be the experience of beauty.
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You Can Say That?
September 2019China could well be poised to inherit the earth that the U.S. once commanded — especially if our comparative student bodies are any indication.
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The Myth of Meritocracy
June 2019A meritocracy fits America’s sense of itself as free from the class-based social structures that defined the European countries from which our predecessors fled.
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By the Lakes of Babylon
March 2019Fr. Hesburgh proved to be a perfect avatar for the Notre Dame he created: an endorser of some kind of vaguely conceived “natural religion.”
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The Great Awokening: The Puritan Roots of the Social Justice Warrior
January-February 2019Social Justice Warriors behave like cult members. They are little Cromwells who demand Robespierre-level ideological purity of every single person.
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I Am Not White
November 2018Public discourse remains limited to material concerns, but what really differentiates human beings is culture, which is founded on religion.
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An Extraordinary Educator's Enduring Legacy
September 2018A review by Christopher Beiting of Francis Bethel, O.S.B's book John Senior and the Restoration of Realism
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Can a Return to Augustine Resolve the Current Educational Crisis?
September 2018A review by K.F. Stewart of On Education, Formation, Citizenship and the Lost Purpose of Learning
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The New Hate Speech: Catholic Teaching at a Catholic College
May 2018An affirmation of Church teaching at Providence College is seen by students and administrators as an act of "homophobia" and "transphobia" that warrants intimidation and threats because it's an offense against the PC narrative.
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The Cult of Diversity at Providence College
January-February 2017A Catholic college, employing the vague and undefined empty vessel of "diversity," is willingly suppressing its own Catholic culture in favor of an infection with Western sexual obsessions.
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The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
June 2016Pushers of political correctness now desire, if not demand, something called "deep diversity" — that is, eliminating all signs of "whiteness" from campuses across the country.
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Fingers on the Triggers
October 2015The "trigger warning" movement seeks to scrub college campuses clean of words and ideas that might cause discomfort, hurt feelings, or negative thoughts. Almost everything has this potential.
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A Chronicle of Christendom's Decline
November 2014A review by Frederick W. Marks of The Crisis of Christendom: 1815-2005: A History of Christendom, Vol. 6
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Hollow Theology
January-February 2013While Catholic colleges have stronger core requirements than their secular counterparts, most have abolished requirements for students to take Catholic theology courses.
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Ivy League Culture Wars
May 2012There are campus activists and groups-- who are not necessarily Catholic or even Christian-- at Ivy League colleges fighting for traditional moral values on marriage and sexuality.
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Another Victim of Institutional Coddling
September 2010On at least one college campus, teaching certain aspects of the Catholic faith -- even in the context of a class on Catholicism -- is considered "hate speech."
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The Marketplace of Ideas -- Command-Economy Style
September 2010If you want to continue teaching on college campuses, it's best to hold to the politically correct version of the genesis of homosexual orientation.
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When Heteronomy & Autonomy Collide
December 2009The University of Notre Dame is positioned to ride the wave of American popular culture, and without a fight will go the way of its sister institutions once run by Protestants.
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Notre Dame, R.I.P.
July-August 2009Notre Dame's honoring of President Obama was the full flowering of the university's rebellion against the Magisterium of the Church.
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Classical Education in Southern California
October 2008Thomas Aquinas College has been providing a superb classical education to students from all over the country for nearly four decades.
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Keeping the Light Burning
January 2003Reviews of Quality With Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith With Their Religious Traditions by Robert Benne... Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions edited by Robert E. Sullivan
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Let's Abolish Most Catholic Colleges & Universities
June 2001Nowadays the old notion that a Catholic college ought to teach Catholicism to undergraduates seems not even to be seriously considered.
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How Much Freedom Can Our Culture Stand?
February 2000Forgotten is the teaching that by knowing truth, a student is freed — saved from drowning in a sea of unfulfilling “self-fulfillment.”
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Student-Professor Sex
February 2000The baseline of professional behavior expounded and approved by professors in their trade journal is disturbingly low.
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Homosexual Memoirs for Catholic Freshmen: Why?
December 1999At a Christian university, students and faculty should be committed to a search for the truth about the truly good life for man.
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Can We Revitalize Catholic Higher Education?
September 1999Perhaps it is unrealistic to think of supporting scores of Catholic colleges in our secular society. Perhaps 10 to 15 is more realistic.
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Shack-Ups & Shakedowns on Campus
July/August 1999Just who qualifies as a "partner" in a "partnership"?
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"Catholic Studies": The New Catholic Ghetto
December 1998A single program relieves the institution of the responsibility to give the entire curriculum a Catholic character.
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The Rift Between the Finest Minds & The Limp Academics Now in Power
September 1998A “Humanities and Arts Memorial” was held at Stanford in 1995, as top universities worked to destroy Western culture.
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A Voice Crying in the Bewilderedness
July/August 1998Mankind exhibits a passion for knowledge and freedom, and an inveterate tendency to be seduced by counterfeits of knowledge and freedom.
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What to Do About Our Largely Secularized Catholic Colleges & Universities?
July/August 1997 VIEW ARTICLE




Academic Fundamentalism?
July-August 1987Review of The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
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Small Gestures
January-February 1985Being clever, brilliant, even what gets called “well-educated” is not to be equated, necessarily, with being considerate, kind, tactful, even plain polite or civil.
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