In recent days, I have found myself asking these rhetorical questions about my foray into public-facing scholarship. I have learned that whenever I engage in these big-picture, existential questions, I can usually point to some kind of internal conflict or dissonance.

The October 2000 issue of The Atlantic featured a lengthy article by the Boston College sociologist Alan Wolfe on “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.” Wolfe’s portrayal of evangelicalism’s intellectual contributions came as a word of encouragement to many of us who had heeded the warnings that Mark Noll had issued six years earlier in…

“So, what do you actually do?” is a very common follow-up question when someone learns that I am a provost. The question occurs frequently enough that I try to find new ways to answer it. For students, I usually quip, “I am a big boss, but not the final boss.” I am thankful to Perry…

“Hypocrites!” Jesus leveled this harsh judgment with a single word, and he was just ramping up. After describing the people’s remarkable ability to predict the weather, he chastised them: “You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?”Lk.…

In her two-part series, “Disabling Ableism,” Melanie A. Howard encourages Christian educators “to engage in our mission-driven work by rooting out the ableism that separates us from one another and denies us the flourishing for which were created.” We warmly affirm Howard’s intent to raise awareness of the often-latent bias of ableism, to increase access…

In the modern world, youth culture, and especially collegiate culture, is often activist culture. Among the college-aged, a freshness of vision combines with just enough personal skill and knowledge to beget (at least sometimes) a burning sense of responsibility. One phrase associated with collegiate protest culture, and with social activism in general, is “be the…

This past month, my wife and I had a Muslim Kazak family over for dinner. To show hospitality, we did not take down all of our Christian symbols in the house. In addition, we began the dinner as usual, with a prayer in Jesus’s name (I explained that as Christians this practice was our usual…

Author’s note: This piece is based on a speech delivered to graduate students at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 2008, when I could legitimately claim to be midlife. I dedicate it to my daughter, Natalie, who will soon be starting a tenure-track position of her own…

Before I sold out to become a rich and powerful philosophy professor in Dubuque, Iowa, I spent several years working at group homes for people with disabilities both physical and intellectual. My wife, who has even more experience in that field, has at various times in her life been severely disabled, due to her multiple…

I am the elephant in the room. Everywhere I go, people are unintentionally drawn to me. Or rather, people are drawn to a part of me. You see, I was born without my right forearm and hand due to Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS). I used to wear a prosthetic arm, but due to some physical…