Pericles Archives - Public Seminar

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 ...

Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias

Ancient reflections on a time of plague

Coronavirus will end the Trump presidency – or it will boost his chances of reelection. COVID-19 will provoke a revolution – or it will restore trust in liberal democratic institutions. It will make us more distant – or it will bring us closer together. Thucydides, the ancient Athenian author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, ...