Archive for the ‘harvard’ tag
Week in Review: Christo et Ecclesiae Edition
What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.
1. Why Harvard Students Should Study More Religion (Lisa Miller, Newsweek): A look at Harvard’s (lack of) religion in its undergraduate curriculum, with special attention to Louis Menand’s attempt to include a course called “Reason and Faith” in Harvard’s revised education requirements. The article quotes a couple of very interesting, and very different, points of view;
“My colleagues fear that taking religion seriously would undermine everything a great university stands for,” the Rev. Peter Gomes, Harvard’s chaplain and a professor of Christian history, told me. “I think that’s ungrounded, but there it is.”Steven Pinker says his main objection to the 2006 proposal that students be required to take a course in a Reason and Faith category was that it seemed to make reason and faith equal paths to truth. “I very, very, very much do not want to go on the record as suggesting that people should not know about religion,” he told me. “But reason and faith are not yin and yang. Faith is a phenomenon. Reason is what the university should be in the business of fostering.”
2. More religion in higher education: Inside Higher Ed featured two opinion articles about the role of religion and theology in academic disciplines – “On Teaching Christianity” by Adam Kosko, who argues that religion classes need to spend more time studying the actual theology of religious figures and movements; and “Everywhere and Nowhere” by Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey, which takes another look at the place of religion within historical studies.
More links after the jump.
Week in Review: Reading Facebook in Canada Edition
Our Week-in-Review feature has a new format. We know there’s way too much to read out there already, so we’re going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.
Not reading a bestseller
What They’re Reading on College Campuses (Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/28/2009). How does this survey of college bookstores match with your experience? Have you read or are you reading any books on this list? Are book discussions related to these top books pertinent among undergrads, grads, faculty, the larger culture? (BTW, the number 1 book on campus? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Photo: Someone reading something a bit more substantial (from kwerfeldein via Flickr)
More U.S. students picking Canadian universities (Susan Snyder, Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/28/2009) reports on undergraduates. Does anyone have information as to whether there is similar appeal/interest to masters/PhD students?
Facebook: The New Classroom Commons? (CHE) – Harriet L. Schwartz of Carlow University raises a few good questions about Facebook interactions between faculty and students. Do students expect faculty to friend them? Do Facebook interactions count as mentoring? Is Facebook too public to be an extension of the classroom?
The Veritas about Harvard (CHE) – Kevin Carey examines an issue that Mike has often thought about: Harvard’s $27 billion endowment. Until this year’s stock fall, the endowment was over $35 billion, yet Harvard still enrolls only 1,600 undergraduate students. That’s $16.9 million per student. How is Harvard using this incredible wealth? By cutting back on services and increasing class sizes. Carey looks at some other options.
Colleges and H1N1 – A Miami (OH) freshman died of H1N1 this past weekend, just days after a recent graduate died from viral pneumonia. How are your universities dealing with H1N1? How are Christians on campus responding? Rodney Stark, in his book The Rise of Christianity
Week in Review (Updated)
[Editor's note: This is a new weekly feature from your blog contributors. Each week, we'll be posting articles, books, news, etc., that Tom, Mike, and the ESN community have been pondering. If you have a book or article you'd like us to add to next week's Review, add it in the comments or send it to either Mike or Tom. Thanks!]
The Harvard disadvantage – The Boston Globe takes a very personal look at students from poor backgrounds at Harvard and their struggles to fit in with the children of privilege.
In the Chronicle, Audrey Williams June provides two looks at the changing world of tenure: a report on the rapid decrease of tenure-track instructors (73% of instructors, including graduate assistants, are now off the tenure track) and a profile of St. John’s 2008 decision to move 20 contingent writing instructors to tenure-track positions.
A few weeks ago, Inside Higher Ed published this advice on managing large writing projects from John Gastil. I (Mike) am working on a large writing project myself at the moment, and plan to take Gastil’s advice about outlining, scheduling, and setting deadlines.
A fine tuned universe? At Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, RJS (a science professor) reviews some high profile opinions on the Anthropic Principle.
From the community
Dave Snoke submitted this very interesting article from the UK, about an Oxford researcher, Justin Barrett, who claims that belief in God (or at least, a god) is ” built into the natural development of children’s minds,” not something learned from the culture around them.
Books
N.T. Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (InterVarsity Press, 2009). Here’s a quote to ponder:
“Knowing God for oneself, as opposed to knowing or thinking about him, is at the heart of Christian living. Discovering that God is gracious, rather than a distant bureaucrat or a dangerous tyrant, is the good news that constantly surprises and refreshes us. But we are not the center of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him. It may look, from our view, as though “me and my salvation” are the be-all and end-all of Christianity. Sadly, many people — many devout Christians! — have preached that way and lived that way. This problem is not peculiar to the churches of the Reformation. It goes back to the high Middle Ages in the Western church, and infects and affects Catholic and Protestant, liberal and conservative, high and low church alike. But a full reading of Scripture itself tells a different story. God made humans for a purpose: not simply for themselves, not simply so that they could be in relationship with him, but so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his wise, glad, fruitful order to the world.” — pp.23-24.
