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Many universities in America are experiencing difficult times. The combination of enrollment declines and operating cost increases has pushed some universities beyond their ability to adapt. A growing number of institutions suffering financial exigency have either closed or been merged into more economically healthy university systems.Evan Castillo and Lyss Welding. 2025. “Tracking College Closures and…

When I was a young professor, before I had children of my own, I found myself getting too emotionally entangled with my students. I don’t think I violated students’ boundaries or did anything intrusive. I was too constitutionally timid for that. But I DID take my students’ problems home with me at night, identifying with…

If you check the lists of pagan or general virtues in the past or present, you will not find this virtue listed (with one exception). If you check the list of virtues found in American laws that list virtues that K-12 schools are supposed to teach students, you will also not see this virtue. You…

I sit in an empty computer lab, surrounded by the sleek machinery of digital existence, propped in the curvature of an adjustable office chair. I have been here all day, all week, working hard, even harder than usual, spurred on by participation in a writing cooperative. There are others in neighboring rooms, secreting words onto…

The study of foreign languages in the United States has experienced a significant decline over the past few decades. According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), enrollment in college-level foreign-language courses dropped 9.2 percent from 2013 to 2016.Julian Wyllie, “Enrollment in Most Foreign-Language Programs Continues to Fall,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2018.…

In recent years, the social sciences have faced a “replication crisis,” raising questions about how we conduct, report, and interpret research findings. A large-scale replication project in 2015 tried to recreate nearly 100 studies from recent publications and found only about 40% of attempts successfully replicated. This finding sent shock waves through the psychology community.…

The faculty summer. You all know what I mean when I say that it’s a complicated phenomenon, right? I mean, think about it; we just completed a crazy spring semester (after getting through a crazy fall semester). As the end of the semester approaches, we start to slow down with the committees and other university…

In recent years, trauma-informed pedagogy has become a widely embraced framework in American education. Teachers and administrators are being trained to recognize signs of emotional dysregulation, respond with empathy rather than punishment, and prioritize safety and trust in classroom relationships. Terms like “fight or flight,” “toxic stress,” and “emotional regulation” have become common in professional…

One of the most intriguing parts about my job is exploring students’ understanding of their virtue development. Recently, our research team has asked college students to provide an example of when they engaged in a virtuous act (e.g., sacrificial love, patience, generosity). We then enquired about what motivated them or helped them carry out the…

Miles Smith IV begins his review of Another Gospel by telling the reader that the book is about Christian Nationalism—which, he writes, can mean “nearly anything” pastors, professors, or politicians find “exotic” at “the intersection of politics and religion.” At such a characterization, the discerning reader will likely raise an eyebrow. Surely this book must…

This July marks the one hundredth anniversary of the most famous event in the history of American religion and science, the trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in a rural Tennessee high school. The rookie teacher was convicted of violating a new state law prohibiting public schools “to teach any theory that denies the…

I am currently co-writing with Jason Duesing a biography of the great missionary Adoniram Judson. It is due to Crossway in mid-2026. Judson is best known for translating the whole Bible into Burmese. This monumental translation is still used today in the Baptist churches of Myanmar (Burma). Judson also maintained an impressive fitness regimen, one…

As I write this post, our sailboat is tied up in a small public marina in British Columbia, twenty-five nautical miles north of the city of Vancouver, on a sunny weekday morning. However, just outside the harbor, twenty-knot winds with forty-knot gusts are whipping up three-foot whitecaps, and even in the harbor, our boat is…

Writing in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Hans Sanders tells the story of Cris Hassold of New College Florida.Hank Sanders, “A Professor’s Final Gift to Her Students: Her Life Savings,” New York Times, May 11, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/us/cris-hassold-professor-new-college-will.html. A story that in so many ways captures the best of what the university can provide…

The title is a good summary of two key objectives of this book. Kennedy is against the idea of a Christian worldview as developed largely by Reformed philosophers and theologians. Here, he joins a growing chorus of writers who have raised concerns about how the worldview approach has come to dominate evangelical Christian education. While…

My friend once said to me: I think living faithfully would be easy if we could only perceive what is faithful. That is, to discern the correct path is a harder task than to walk it. Knowing which way to go and what to do is more challenging than the going and the doing. Jesus…

That sense of nagging fear  There is a nagging fear I experience sometimes. I’m tempted to attribute it to something earthly and circumstantial - some specific, mundane event or condition that, once solved, will make the fear go away. But I know better now. This fear is repetitive and familiar. Finally, I begin to recognize…

In Priests of History, Sarah Irving-­Stonebraker diagnoses a partial cause of the identity crisis currently plaguing Western culture, generally, and the Western Church, particularly. We do not know ourselves because we have neglected the past. We are “ahistorical,” a term used by Irving-­Stonebraker to describe the loss of “meaningful engagement with, and connection to, history”…

Biblical Critical Theory is sparklingly clear and engagingly written. Part of the reason it is so engaging is that Christopher Watkin’s personal story is woven into the story without ever being intrusive or grating. As Christian academic writers, we can learn from the way he as a human being seeking truth and wholeness addresses us…

I remember serving as an advisor on a fascinating master’s thesis that examined the origins of higher education in Texas. There is one historical bit of information that has stayed with me from that thesis. Before the Civil War, forty faith-informed colleges were started in Texas. Only two survived: Baylor University (1845) and the University…