Michael Bérubé

"Buddhists speak of learning to see the world with “beginner’s mind,” and that’s precisely what you have to do every semester: begin again, from scratch, knowing that anything can happen — seeing those…"

"I suggest, therefore, that we try to see the intellectual challenges of contemporary literary study as enriched by rather than in competition with knowledge of the history of literary theory. In the s…"

"We sometimes play the blues, too, but we don’t talk about which blues club or which blues tradition we’re “affiliated with.” Who knows? Maybe if there were fewer academic workers caught up in the mech…"

"Global capitalism doesn’t necessarily entail a global citizenry dedicated to relentless, free-ranging inquiry; sometimes the two can be positively antithetical — as they are in China, where multinatio…"

"One of the strengths of Cultivating Humanity is that it explicitly explores the conflict between authority and reason, even if the book does not entirely resolve this conflict. Nussbaum’s untrammeled …"

"I’m not suggesting that every aspect of popular culture has the pedagogical potential of Antigone or the Aeneid, and I’m not suggesting that “classic” popular culture can do all of the intellectual wo…"

"The paradox is that university life can be both terrific and troubling for parents and children alike: the workplace environment is casual and accommodating on the one hand and clueless and hostile on…"

"Universities can try, with a little imagination, a little nerve, and a little more money, to provide a humane working and living environment for every human being they employ and every human family in…"