All Writings and Appearances

First Things, June 1, 2021 Twenty-twenty was a tough year for the tradition-minded, and so far, 2021 isn’t any better. Those of us who...

Classical Wisdom, May 26, 2021 Can we understand the Classics without the classroom? A guide to getting (really) educated with James...

Law & Liberty, March 24, 2021 Imagine you are a teenager newly arrived at college. You’ve had a couple inspiring teachers of literature...

Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2021 Ours is an age of intellectual conformity. Perhaps this is true to some extent of all ages, as...

Sacred Architecture Journal, Spring 2021 "Christian humanism” seems an oxymoron. Since the nineteenth century, humanism has been widely...

Law & Liberty, February 10, 2021 At the beginning of Men at Arms , Evelyn Waugh’s great novel of the Second World War, his protagonist...

Cultura Animi 4 (2021) In this disturbing year of 2020, I find that I have to be careful what I read before going to bed. To get a good...

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2020 I don’t find the word “hyperpartisanship” in any dictionary. It’s not in the  Oxford English...

American Affairs  4.4 (Winter, 2020)   There is something a little unsettling about a nation that deliberately sets about increasing its...

First Things , November 1, 2020   The words “piety” and “pious” have an archaic ring; moderns find them hard to use without irony or a...

Law & Liberty, October 5. 2020 It was about fifteen years ago, I believe, that I first became aware that “classical liberalism” was a...

The New Criterion , October 2020   (On the aesthetics and history of the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.)   Abraham Lincoln had...

September 24, 2020 James Hankins speaks with Luca Politi, graduate student in Italian at Harvard University, about the concept of virtue...

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, August 19, 2020 I’m sometimes asked why it is so difficult for PhD students of a...

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, August 19, 2020 I’m sometimes asked why it is so difficult for PhD students of a...

Law & Liberty, August 3, 2020 The combination of election year politics with the demonstrations and riots following the brutal killing of...

The Spectator (World) , August 31, 2020 Fall Newsletter Our Director, Eustace Stockstill, introduces the Fall issue.    Dear fellow...

Quillette, July 29, 2020 It is a striking feature of our historical moment that vast numbers of cultural institutions, universities and...

The Wall Street Journal , June 29, 2020   (On the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.)   At the end of the Civil War, on April 11,...

Church Life Journal, June 24, 2020 Some readers may be puzzled to see the term “secularity” in the title of this essay in place of the...