As I was driving to Bakersfield last week, it occurred to me that it was thirty years ago this year that I began my academic career as a teacher. In 1993 I was serving as the pastor of what was then Walnut . . . Continue reading →
These are some of our favorite Heidelquotes. Something to think about from the Heidelcast. If you are subscribed to the Heidelcast or the Heidelblog (see below) you will receive these episodes automatically. All the Episodes of the Heidelcast How To Subscribe To Heidelmedia . . . Continue reading →
So you will understand why I was disappointed to hear from KU Law students who recently came to me to express concern over administration actions surrounding a lunch-hour event sponsored by the student chapter of the Federalist Society. My understanding, from participants, . . . Continue reading →
Just out today from Stella Morabito, The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer from Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press. The publisher writes, Do you keep your opinions to yourself because you’re afraid people will . . . Continue reading →
I argue that if Christians are to respond fully and properly to Critical Theory, such a response must be rooted in a truly Christian biblical-theological framework. Such a Christian response will recognize that Critical Theory is in effect an alternative theology or . . . Continue reading →
Yet perhaps one of the reasons why so many people—including Christians—have been drawn to forms of critical theory and their activism is that at times they see a lack of love and mercy in the church and abuses by those in positions . . . Continue reading →
One of the great, idealistic hopes of the Enlightenment was that man would finally be free from God and the various biblical, pre-Enlightenment ideas that held man captive. Many envisioned a secular utopia. The French Revolution is just one example of such . . . Continue reading →
I’ve been a professor in the Anthropology Department at UCLA since 1996; I received tenure in 2000. My research has spanned topics ranging from nonhuman primate behavior to human personality variation. For decades, anthropology has been notorious for conflict between the scientific and political . . . Continue reading →
Rhetoric related to critical theory is everywhere we turn. Watch the news, read social media, or listen to the radio. It would be hard to miss the nearly endless references to racism, sexism, and the economic and legal disparities between those who . . . Continue reading →
The world in which we live
seems set to be entering a new,
chaotic, uncharted, and dark
era. Continue reading →
Many of are familiar with books and movies whose plots revolve around central characters finding themselves trapped in a world where nothing behaves quite as they expect. Perhaps Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass might be the . . . Continue reading →
The facts recounted in any historical work are important, but so are the uses to which those facts are put, the tools used to analyze those facts, and the conclusions that are drawn from those facts. Accurate details can be both cherry-picked . . . Continue reading →
Democratic education, says Aristotle, ought to mean, not the education which democrats like, but the education which will preserve democracy. Until we have realized that the two things do not necessarily go together we cannot think clearly about education. For example, an . . . Continue reading →
Years ago, Anthony Esolen pointed out that pedophilia and the free and easy attitudes toward sex in contemporary society share a common moral structure: both prioritize the sexual desires of adults over the welfare of children. The difference, of course, is that . . . Continue reading →
The people who dominate American public life come from a few elite schools. Yale Law School (YLS) is one of those institutions. Continue reading
This outsized influence of the university on K–12 schools occurs not without precedent. Once before, our nation’s dominant philosophy of education universally altered. Prior to the 20th century, American education was almost universally classical in nature — great books, grammar and rhetoric, . . . Continue reading →
Dysphoria is another word for “restlessness.” It doesn’t mean being fidgety or ill at ease; it means being depressed, disquieted, overcome by Angst. Much like the term euphoria at the other end of the emotional spectrum, dysphoria connotes being under the influence. My Concordia university is experiencing dysphoria because it is coming under the influence of Woke-ism (that is, a potent cocktail of Progressivism, Neo-Pragmatism, and Marxism). Continue reading →
Christina Wyman has published an OpEd on NBCnews.com in which she argues that parents who insist on influencing the education of their children do not understand how education actually works. She observes that the latest crisis, focused on the schools in Loudon . . . Continue reading →
While many on the right default to accusations of cultural Marxism when confronted with such iconoclasm, I would argue that this latest trend is reminiscent of nothing so much as Friedrich Nietzsche’s haunting statement in Twilight of the Idols: “I fear we . . . Continue reading →
The genesis of CRT in education is arguably Gloria Ladson-Billings’s seminal essay “Just what is critical race theory and what is it doing in a nice field like education?” In it, she repudiates the slow progress of the civil-rights movement and concludes . . . Continue reading →