President’s Letter: Data Analytics in the Context of Liberal Learning

2019 Issue 1May 20, 2019May 20, 2019

President’s Letter: Data Analytics in the Context of Liberal Learning

Many liberal arts colleges have come under extraordinary duress in recent years, and many universities (when not just focused on specialized research) seem to have abandoned broad, contextual learning in favor of vocational majors, TV-friendly athletics, and cultivating a party atmosphere so as to l…

2019 Issue 1May 20, 2019May 20, 2019

Editor’s Note: Difficult Problems and Creative Solutions

Despite growing up in Connecticut, most of what I knew about Wesleyan as an adolescent was that a very bright friend of mine—Nick Encalada-Malinowski ’04—chose it from many other impressive collegiate options. Aside fro…

2019 Issue 1May 20, 2019

Letter to the Editor: Remembering Wesleyan’s 10th Mountain Division of World War II

Dear Editor: When WWII brought the Enlisted Reserve Corps (ERC) to Wesleyan, many of us joined at our administrators’ urging us to stay in college. In a short time, a program by the Navy took precedence and we ERC were …

2018 Issue 3December 6, 2018December 7, 2018

President’s Letter: Interdisciplinary Education

IDEAS is now a minor, and I suspect before too long it will take its place among the interdisciplinary majors offered at the university. I can hardly wait to see what faculty and students make of this addition to our edu…

2018 Issue 3December 4, 2018February 2, 2020

Letters: Reflecting on an Interview with Muhammad Ali

Dear Editors: Congratulations on the “Journalism's Brave New World” issue of the magazine. It reminded me of my earli…

2018 Issue 3December 3, 2018May 21, 2019

Editor’s Note: Ideas on Design: Dualities

As this magazine has come together, I’ve realized that this issue has been all about dualities—holding in one’s mind two separate, sometimes contrasting things as part of a whole, while still moving forward. Since Sep…

2018 Issue 2September 7, 2018May 21, 2019

Editor’s Note: A Stethoscope, a Camera Lens, and a Batphone

This issue on journalism and media has felt more personal than most, particularly as we prepared for the retirement of editor Bill Holder ’75. While collecting stories of the journalists profiled in these pages, I’ve bee…

2018 Issue 2September 7, 2018May 21, 2019

Letters: An Ally in Prof. Hatch, Remembering Manfred Stassen, Leadership in Population Health

It’s Good To Find An Ally In Associate Professor Hatch It was encouraging to read the Wesleyan magazine article, “Health Care and Racism: A Toxic Mix,” (2018, issue 1) concerning the work of Associate Professor of Sci…

2018 Issue 2September 7, 2018May 21, 2019

President’s Letter: Student Publications, Editorial Autonomy

“Reading the morning newspaper is the realist’s morning prayer,” wrote Georg Friedrich Hegel. “One orients one’s attitude toward the world either by God or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the l…

2018 Issue 1May 10, 2018December 12, 2018

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

The question took me by surprise. I had just finished lecturing to about 75 undergraduates at Peking University on the virtues of American-style pragmatic liberal education. My book Beyond the University: Why Liberal Edu…