Most of my writing over the years (apart from an incessant flow of memos and administrative trivia) has been in the field of classical studies. But what got me interested in that field in the first place was that classical antiquity as we know it through the historical record, literary texts and visual representations, presents with such clarity recurring questions that all of us, today more than ever, as private individuals, and as citizens, need to think through. That's a theme in most of the essays selected for this part of the website. Only a few are directly related to classical studies, but all, I believe, in some degree or other, reflect on the Socratic insight that the unexamined life is not worth living, and how one might give some form to that insight now in a work of radical difference and rapid change.

Bob Connor

Essays:

• A Second Adolescence: Two Big Questions and Where They Belong (February 1, 2008)


• President's Report: Advancing Student Learning: What We are Learning at the Teagle Foundation, 2007 Annual Report (January, 2008)


• The Role of the Undergraduate Major in Advancing Liberal Learning. (January 4, 2008)


• Searching for Islands of Success (October 4, 2007; originally published in Inside Higher Ed)


• Watching Charlotte Climb: Little Steps toward Big Questions (Spring 2007; originally published in Liberal Education)


• Do as I say, Not as I did (December 7, 2006)


• At the Crossroads: The Prospect for Improving Student Learning, 2006 Annual Report (November, 2006)


• Asking the Big Questions, 2006 Annual Report (November, 2006)


• Getting There, 2006 Annual Report (November, 2006)


• Last Bastion of Liberal Education? (July 24, 2006; originally published in Inside Higher Ed)


• The Right Time and Place for Big Questions (June 9, 2006; orginally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education)


• Dreams and Fancies (June 3, 2006)


• Teaching Classics to Sam Alito (April 18, 2006) (PDF)


• From Foxes to Hedgehogs: Taking Liberal Education to the Next Level—Valuing our Values (March 31, 2006)


• Liberal Education: Liberating Education (February 16, 2006)


• Where Have All the Big Questions Gone? (December 12, 2005)


• President's Report: From Dollar-Based to Knowledge-Based Philanthropy, 2005 Annual Report (October, 2005)


• Give Majors an Overhaul (November 15, 2005)


• Morality and other “Big Questions” in Liberal Education (October 15, 2005)


• Big Questions? (October 11, 2005)


• President's Letter to the Editor, The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), (May 18, 2005) (PDF)


• Tendencies in Higher Education That Might Affect Classical Studies (December 15, 2004)


• Report on a study by Roger Kaufman and Geoffrey Woglom on Graduation Rates and Ph.D. Production in Liberal Arts Colleges (December 13, 2004)


• Is There a Gold Standard in Undergraduate Education? (December 13, 2004)


• Earliest Evidence for Liberal Education (Revised November 9, 2004)


• President's Report, 2004 Annual Report (June, 2004)


• The Structuring of Knowledge through Departments: A Case Study (5th Edit, Revised May 18, 2004)


• Deconstructing Narrative of Decline (Revised February 10, 2004)


• Greed is Not Enough (October 3, 2002) (PDF)


• Moral Knowledge in the Modern University (Appearing in Ideas, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1999)