R. R. Reno

Last week Insider Higher Education offered a helpful summary of a new study that dug down a bit into the culture of higher education to see how conservative students survive and thrive . The study found that students at an elite liberal arts college tended to have positive experiences, even though . . . . Continue Reading »

King’s College is an undergraduate institution in Manhattan.  Revitalized by Campus Crusade a decade or so ago, it was moved to the Empire State Building. The college was meant to bring Christ to Babylon, and to bring Christian students into the hurley-burley of a global city. Today . . . . Continue Reading »

R. J. Snell, philosophy professor at Eastern University, posted an interesting essay today on The Public Discourse: “ Universities and the Graciousness of Being .” In the main, Snell wants to draw attention to the important role that good manners play in social life. At a minimum, like . . . . Continue Reading »

After the accountants tallied up their figures, Chinese GDP surpassed Japan’s in the second quarter of this year. No surprises there. The torrid growth of the Chinese economy over the last two decades has made this milestone inevitable. The population of China is ten times greater than that . . . . Continue Reading »

“From existentialism to deconstruction,” writes Pascal Bruckner in his broadside, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, “all modern thought can be reduced to a mechanical denunciation of the West, emphasizing the latter’s hypocrisy, violence, and abomination.” I wouldn’t say that John Rawls or Jürgen Habermas or Benedict XVI fit that description… . Continue Reading »

Cezanne, Matisse, Monet, Picasso—the impressionist and post-impressionist painters bring in the big crowds at the museums. Van Gogh posters have had a fifty-year run as best sellers. What explains the enduring popularity of the largely French art that, in its day, was seen as shocking and . . . . Continue Reading »

As is the case in so many other countries, the Australian government is revisiting the question of higher education. The United States isn’t all that different. We’re worried about how to finance our gigantic system, and we’re concerned about how to ensure that various . . . . Continue Reading »

This week we learned that the Pope will not accept the resignation of two Irish auxiliary bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field. The Murphy Report in 2009 implicated them in the larger failures of the Irish hierarchy to respond to sexual abuse by priest. John Allen at the National Catholic . . . . Continue Reading »

There tends to be confusion in some responses to the recent decision to overturn Proposition 8 in California. On the one hand, defenders of traditional marriage often point to natural law, or if not natural law, at least a common wisdom about the natural purposes of marriage—a disciplining . . . . Continue Reading »

In the last few days, various human rights organizations have criticized the Wikileaks posting of thousands of secret documents about U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Amnesty International and others point out something that should have been obvious to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Many . . . . Continue Reading »