The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.— Allan Bloom
When Allan Bloom wrote The Closing Of The American Mind more than three decades ago, he probably never imagined that the absence of intellectual pluralism he decried would still be upon us. There is an undeniable divide between the Academy and the larger society. The curtain that has been drawn around colleges and universities no longer protects intellectual exchange and a search for the truth. In the modern academy, many certainly do not know all of the ideas worthy of consideration.
Minding the Campus hopes to change that by fostering a new climate of opinion that favors civil and honest engagement of all ideas, offering an engaged debate for readers concerned with the state of the modern university and the society it serves. We provide a simple central resource, featuring fresh original content from professors and academics and we draw upon the best from established magazines and publications, as well as from less-visited corners, from professional journals to blogs and student publications. In connecting resources from disparate worlds, we hope to connect their readers, fostering potential for real discussion and change. A conversation about America’s Universities is needed; look for it here.
Masthead
Peter W. Wood is the Executive Editor of Minding the Campus and President of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Wood is an anthropologist and former provost. He was appointed president of the NAS in January 2009. Before that he served as NAS’s executive director (2007-2008), and as provost of The King’s College in New York City (2005-2007).
Dr. Wood was a tenured member of the Anthropology Department at Boston University, where he also held a variety of administrative positions, including associate provost and president’s chief of staff. He also oversaw the university’s scholarly publications and served as acting university librarian.
He received his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1987 from the University of Rochester. His dissertation, Quoting Heaven, examined the emergence of an American folk religion and pilgrimage center in rural Wisconsin. His undergraduate degree is from Haverford College (1975) and he has a master’s degree in library science from Rutgers University (1977).
Dr. Wood is the author of A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (Encounter Books, 2007) and of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (Encounter Books, 2003) which won the Caldwell Award for Leadership in Higher Education from the John Locke Foundation. These books extend his anthropological interest in examining emergent themes in modern American culture.
In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Wood has published several hundred articles in print and online journals, such as Partisan Review and National Review Online, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Dr. Wood can be reached at wood@nas.org.
Jared Gould is the Managing Editor of Minding the Campus. He can be reached at gould@nas.org
Chance Layton is an Editor of Minding the Campus. He is the Director of Communications of the National Association of Scholars. He can be reached at layton@nas.org.
John Leo (1935 – 2022) was Editor-Emeritus and Founder of Minding the Campus. He was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at the Institute’s City Journal. His popular column, “On Society,” ran in U.S. News & World Report for 17 years, and appeared in 140 newspapers through the Universal Press Syndicate. Leo worked as a senior writer for Time magazine, and as a staff reporter for the New York Times specializing in intellectual trends and the social sciences. Other positions he held include assistant administrator of New York City’s environmental protection administration, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa, associate editor of Commonweal, book editor of the social science journal Trans-Action (now Society), and “Press Clips” columnist for the Village Voice. He authored three books, most recently “Incorrect Thoughts.” To read MTC’s obituary for John, click here.
Writing for Minding the Campus
Learn more about writing for Minding the Campus here. Submit essays or queries to gould@nas.org.
Minding the Campus is a subsidiary of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a New York City-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting reasoned scholarship in a free society.