Young Arab men are not going to walk away from extremism because they can suddenly afford a Slurpee. They will walk away when they can devote themselves to a some call to serve a cause...

Those born in the poorest quarter of American society have an 8% chance of earning a college degree. Those born in the wealthiest quarter of American society have a 75% chance of earning a college...

What we have before us then, is three distinct purposes for a university: the commercial purpose (starting a career), Stephen Pinker’s cognitive purpose (acquiring information and learning how to think) and (William) Deresiewicz’s moral purpose...

They finally achieve a sort of outward-facing union.

How do you teach a classroom of Sybils who are breaking apart and reforming right in front of you?

(A middle-class child’s) parents didn’t just give him money. They passed down habits, knowledge, and cognitive traits.

This is how life works. Deciding whom to love is not an alien form of decision-making, a romantic interlude in the midst of normal life. Instead, decisions about whom to love are more intense versions...

You can’t counter a heroic impulse with a mundane and bourgeois response. You can counter it only with a more compelling heroic vision.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Universities, he (William Dershowitz) says, have been absorbed into the commercial ethos. Instead of being intervals of freedom, they are breeding grounds for advancement. Students are too busy jumping through the next hurdle in the...

Almost every successful person begins with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.

(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the...

Dan P. McAdams argues that children develop a narrative tone which influences their stories for the rest of their lives. Children gradually adopt an enduring assumption that everything will turn out well, or badly, depending...

… there are other proud people who have low self-esteem. They feel they haven’t lived up to their potential. They feel unworthy. They want to hide and disappear, to fade into the background and nurse...

We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don’t know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show...

They possess the self- effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world:

wonderful people are made, not born – that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue, built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments.

Her genius derives from the fact that she was capable of the deepest feeling but also of the most discerning and disciplined thought.

Ehimlite universities are strong at delivering their commercial mission. They are pretty strong in developing their cognitive mission. But when it comes to the sort of growth Deresiewicz is talking about, everyone is on their...

To nurture your career, it makes sense to cultivate your strengths. To nurture your moral core, it is necessary to confront your weaknesses.