Public Writings

The Spectator (World) , March 10, 2020   Spring term, 2170. Professor Hankins assigns an English translation from the 22nd century’s most...

The Spectator (World) , February 26, 2020 At the time of his death on Good Friday, 1520, Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino was the most...

The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2019 It’s common for historians to write books for the anniversaries of famous events, like the...

American Affairs , Winter 2019   In a state where one may not criticize the regime, one learns the art of the unsaid. In China, as in the...

The New Criterion, December 2019 One thing you have to say about Leonardo da Vinci is that he really packs them in. The last major...

The Wall Street Journal , December 1, 2019   Thanksgiving is over and, predictably, impeachment couldn’t be kept off the table. We tried...

The New Criterion, November 2019 Among the “theoretical perspectives” that the modern academy expects us to take seriously is what is...

The New Criterion, September 2019 This year is the five-hundredth anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, and the museum world has not...

First Things , December 1, 2018   At present there is a great deal of handwringing about civility. On campus, students in screaming packs...

American Affairs , Fall 2018   Ex oriente lux.  With the spring academic term finished, I am in Japan and China, ostensibly to give...

The New Criterion, December 2017 Fame often does an artist little good. Quite apart from the moral temptations, there is the danger of...

Claremont Review of Books, Fall, 2017 Carlos Eire, America’s leading historian of the Reformation, which marked its 500th anniversary in...

The New Criterion, July 27, 2017 From his death in 1520 to the early nineteenth century, Raphael was widely regarded as the greatest...

American Affairs , Summer 2017   Meritocracy has become a theme of great interest in contemporary politics, both in Western and Eastern...

The New Criterion, June 2017 In his memoir Unforgotten Years (1938), the expatriate writer and aesthete Logan Pearsall Smith relates with...