Recently, there was a dustup at Reed College, my alma mater.  Like elsewhere, the students are balking against the curriculum.  In particular, they resent being dragged through the Humanities, a survey course on western culture that begins with ancient Greece.  To focus

One normally doesn’t tout the quarterly edition of an alumni magazine as scintillating reading, but I’m often surprised by what I discover in mine. Nestled among the names of those who are working on PhDs, or writing books or having babies, or doing nothing because they have died,