On the Politics of Non-Politics at the University of Wisconsin

Avoiding “university politics” is under normal circumstances a wise move by non-tenured professors because of how vicious such politics can be. Perhaps if more scholars who take on administrative positions with considerable power were more passionate about learning more in their respective fields of knowledge, the power itself would not be used so much to settle scores (i.e., retaliate). As Jesus says in the Gospels concerning God and money, a person cannot serve two masters. When the president of a university system is a lawyer rather than a scholar holding a doctorate, a passion for acquiring academic knowledge cannot be relied upon to keep the occupant of the high office focused on the essentials rather than on “extracurricular activities.” When the Board of Regents fired Jay Rothman, a lawyer who had been the presiding officer of the University of Wisconsin system (i.e., the main and branch campuses) on March 7, 2026, the fact that he was not oriented as a scholar—he had earned two undergraduate degrees—was arguably part of the reason for the firing, given the salience of politics both in his conduct while in office and his firing.  

The full essay is at "On the Politics of Non-Politics at the University of Wisconsin."

I Wasn't Supposed to be a Writer

Ideally, a person is able to earn money doing something that matches one's authentic self. In other words, working in a field that is also passion and involves an innate talent or ability can add a lot to the happiness of a life. Many people get sidetracked, whether by greed or limited opportunities. Still other people do not know what their passions are, or have not realized what natural talents, or "gifts," could be tapped. Some people get trapped in dysfunctional organizations in which the organizational culture discourages self-discovery or is otherwise negative and even vindictive. 

The full essay is at "I Wasn't Supposed To Be A Writer."

"Old School" Scholars and the Contemporary American University: Oil and Water

In the 2000s, I had the honor of studying under Patrick Riley, a scholar of historical moral, religious, and political thought. Even though I had had "old-school" professors in the course of my degreed studies at Indiana University and Yale, Riley's approach can be said to be medieval. After four years of auditing his courses and those of many of other professors at Riley's request at a large Midwestern university, I received not a degree nor even many academic credits, but. rather, a hand-written letter in which he let his colleagues know that I could teach graduate-school level political theory. It is no accident that he periodically visited the University of Bologna, which, aside from hosting the huge project of publishing Leibniz's correspondence, was as the first university in Europe, founded in 1066. Back then, I bet letters of recommendation were the principal way in which scholars got hired; a scholar became recognized as one when the scholar he studied under realized that the budding scholar knew enough of the field, which is more than merely doing well in some classes. How technocratic and artificial contemporary universities would seem to ancient and medieval scholars. I think they would be startled at how many pedestrian scholars there are, who relish making narrow distinctions based on technicalities. In contrast, Patrick Riley a product of Harvard, where he continued to work and live even during the many years in which he took weekly flights during the semesters out to a Midwestern university, viewed European intellectual history in the great book tradition and was thus able to see intellectual inheritances well beyond Augustine's in Plato and Aquinas' in Aristotle. Riley traced how the theory of justice as love and benevolence came together from strands of thought in Plato and Augustine in the thought of Leibniz, and how the social contract school of political thought changed in going from Hobbes to Kant. Moreover, I admired Riley's relating of historical theological and moral thought to the political thought. How technocratic or pedestrian so many other twentieth-century scholars were, but not Patrick Riley. 

The full essay is at "Old-School Scholars"