Eileen Hunt Botting, Author at Public Seminar

North America

Amy Coney Barrett’s Fall from Grace

A Rose Garden superspreader event puts in doubt the Supreme Court nominee’s commitment to the right to life

October 8, 2020 • by Eileen Hunt Botting

----- It was supposed to be her big moment. One sunny Saturday in late September, the White House summoned Amy Coney Barrett for a historic ceremony in the Rose Garden. As she stood on the dais alongside President Trump, she finally saw the fruit of her decades of hard work in the ...

Higher Ed

COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Moving online and volunteering for vaccine trials this Fall requires a more prudent courage than reopening college campuses for classes and football

September 16, 2020 • by Edwin Michael and Eileen Hunt Botting

––––––– The next time you check the COVID-19 dashboard of your favorite university on your laptop screen, imagine asking: Who’s the bravest of them all? Pretend you’re like the Evil Queen in Snow White, who gazes in a mirror, asking who is the fairest of them all, in order to eliminate ...

COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Higher Ed

The Pandemic Has Revealed the Driving Values of American Higher Education

Universities like UNC are going online for the public good, while other universities persist in reopening for perceived prestige and elite branding

August 24, 2020 • by Eileen Hunt Botting and Edwin Michael

Yet despite the rapidly escalating numbers of COVID-19 cases on campus, this elite private Catholic research university has kept its undergraduates in the dormitories at full capacity, and expressed its intention to reopen its campus again by Labor Day weekend for in-person classes, work, and other activities including Division I ...

Higher Ed

Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias

College and university presidents should have the courage to halt their reopening

July 30, 2020 • by Eileen Hunt Botting

In late May, the President of Notre Dame and Thomist philosopher Fr. John I. Jenkins defended his decision to reopen its campus in terms of the university’s religious and moral values, including the virtue of having soldierly “courage” in the face of death. This, he insisted, was a virtuous Aristotelian “mean” between ...