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 web site. 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

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) | Podcast

From Foxes to Hedgehogs (March 31, 2006; originally published in Inside Higher Ed) | Podcast

Liberal Education: Liberating Education (February 16, 2006)

Where Have All the Big Questions Gone? (December 12, 2005; originally published in Inside Higher Ed)

Give Majors an Overhaul (November 15, 2005; originally published in Slate magazine)

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)

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)