Peter Levine
A Blog for Civic Renewal
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Latest posts
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beautiful structures and the revival of public life
In 1983, David P. Billington began his book The Tower and the Bridge with words that could be written today: While automation prospers, our roads, bridges, and urban civil works rot. Children control computers while adults weave between potholes. The higher that high technology…
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community engagement and concern for democratic values
I am interested in the Tocquevillian thesis that participating in voluntary groups enhances democratic and liberal values. John Dewey was another major proponent of this view. Alan Ryan emphasizes Dewey’s belief that democracy, properly understood, “bubble[s] naturally upward…
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reply
No, how could I believe in my poetryIf even David Plante disbelieves in his?But I, too, can ask why I want to write,Expecting no success but enjoyingA cool pool of words in which to slide down,Noises fading in the muffling depths, orLike rinsing mud from the side of a…
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what should be the mission of a great university?
The recent Report of the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education says: Focus on the mission. In 2016, departing from its traditional emphasis on the creation and dissemination of knowledge, Yale expanded its mission statement to include “improving the world today,” educating…
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translating Mind is Mind-Made
Few lines of text have been memorized by as many human beings over as many centuries as this one: You don’t have to know the language to glean that it is verse. It consists of two pairs of eight syllables–a pattern that repeats for many subsequent lines after this one. Gama…
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what about human life is essential to preserve?
At the beginning of the 20th century, people could presume that we are terrestrial creatures whose habitat is Planet Earth. They could predict that we will continue to live as humans until our far-distant natural demise or an end decreed by God. They could define human beings as…
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why Victorian elites spent so few hours on the job compared to modern elites
According to the American Time Use Survey, American managers work a median of 43 hours per week, and 10% of them work at least 55 hours per week (Flood, Sayer, and Backman; my tabulations). Managers work more hours than people in the lower-status occupational categories.…
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full-time college students spend 90 minutes per day on academics
[Oct. 14: Dustin Fry, a postdoc at the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, notes that many–apparently, 55%–of respondents who are coded as full-time college students report zero hours of academic work. This begins to look to me like some kind of data error rather…
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a deliberative response to Trump’s building projects?
Imagine that it’s 2029 and you have been inaugurated as the President of the United States. (Congratulations and good luck.) You can look out from your bedroom window or during a helicopter ride and see a new ballroom, a huge arch, a helipad, a sculpture garden, and other major…
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public intellectuals and the fickle food of fame
This weekend, at Amherst, I enjoyed a rich conversation about the purposes of liberal arts colleges. One proposal (not mine, but I appreciated it) was for liberal arts colleges to nurture public intellectuals. The colleges represented at the meeting use basically the same…
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Civic Studies and the Black Intellectual Tradition
The Center for the Humanities at Tufts and the Center for Public History will offer a discussion on “The University and the Democratic Imagination: Civic Studies and the Black Intellectual Tradition” at 4:30 pm on Oct. 5 with Hollis Robbins, Brandon Terry, and me. Please join…