Three Things that Will Make You Think

Hi friends, I thought I’d share with you three great things that I’ve read, listened to, and watched that really did make me think.

First, Jacques Berlinblaue wrote a great piece about the Hamline Uni art-history teacher who got sacked for showing students medieval Muslim art featuring Mohammed. He locates the episode in the context of poor working conditions for emerging scholars.

This is faculty fratricide, one of the most underscrutinized, and enticingly operatic, storylines in today’s academy. In cahoots with trustees, consultants, “inclusive excellence” professionals, and other nonscholars, these tenured leaders are cannibalizing their own profession. That dean, provost, president or chancellor who is “sunsetting” tenure, hiring cheap labor, holding down costs, arousing the Captains of Industry on the Board, and thus decimating academic free speech was (and is) one of us. Having benefited from tenure’s perks and protections, they fail to extend that courtesy to future generations. 

Second, check out Brendan O’Neil’s interview with Austrian political philosopher and economist Ralph Schoellhammer about why energy supply is crucial for global prosperity. He is not a climate change denier, he wants to reduce CO2 emissions, but he warns of the misanthropist and Malthusian ideologies in the Green movement that believe that humanity either is some kind of cancer or else that humanity should go back to living in pre-industrial times. To maintain our standard of living, to advance human civilization, to lift the global south out of poverty, you need energy!

Third, my buddy Dr. Nijay Gupta has a great mini-lecture on 1-2 Thessalonians that I really do recommend you watch!