👏"At its best, however, moral relativism is motivated precisely by the desire to get to the bottom of things... a sense of humility before the wide & variegated expanse of human experience & aspiration... far from being motivated by intellectual laziness" cambridge.org/core/elements/…

Join us tomorrow, when I will argue that no purported benefit of AI in universities is worth the cost: rendering students subcognitive.

For influential 20th-century anthropologists, religion could not be reduced to its social function or explained away by other metadiscourses chronicle.com/newsletter/the…

Couple of weeks ago Len Gutkin published very interesting reflections on Lisa Anderson's essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education: chronicle.com/newsletter/the…

Is international law dead? Are human rights over? My latest for The Guardian Long Read : theguardian.com/law/2025/jun/2…

“For the people caught in one, the start of every war is an assault on the fabric of time.” —Amir Ahmadi Arian on Israel’s war on Iran go.nybooks.com/3ZEWnUU

An interview with Geoff Dyer: 'The relationship I had with Barthes and Williams was one of love. And being in love with anything or anyone is always transformative – for a while at least.' Leo Robson newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…

William F. Buckley Jr.: Yale, God, Man, And Anthropology, by Len Gutkin Chronicle Review The Chronicle of Higher Education bit.ly/441yCsR

In my latest Providence, I appreciated the chance to write about Christopher Lasch's *Plain Style* and his general philosophy for teaching writing--and why good writing is a project of civilizational significance. providencemag.com/2025/07/christ…

Until Christian scholarship discovered the Hebrew text in the sixteenth century, the fact that the Christian Bible began life as a translation lay far below the surface, writes Olga Litvak. hedgehogreview.com/issues/lessons…

Very much looking forward to reading this:

Most-read articles in June were, unsurprisingly, from our latest issue, “The Embattled University.” Here’s the top 5 list from last month:

5/ Len Gutkin, “Institutionalized Incivility” (Summer 2025) muse.jhu.edu/article/961489

Cambridge historian Christopher Clark: we are witnessing the "The End of Modernity": foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/30/mod…

“Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.” —Javier Marías buff.ly/D43V3z3

Excellent and fascinating piece looking at the growth of normativity/ activism/ "evangelism" across multiple fields and attributing it potentially to our declining significance. Good read!

Among other things, Skrmetti was about whether experts are, in fact, experts: chronicle.com/newsletter/the…

Good as ever, esp about debates around expertise & the way politics and science are often intertwined

Was hosted on Interintellect 🧭 by me! Excellent debate between Anastasia Berg and Hollis Robbins about AI in education. Watch here: youtube.com/watch?v=eR_cRi… The transcript is in Jon's tweet below: