The Covert Inquisitor on Campus

spiked-culture | Article | The new Chief Inquisitor on campus: "Of course words can offend. But one of the roles of a university is to challenge conventional truths - and that means academics questioning the sacred and mentioning the unmentionable. A proper university teaches its members how not to take hateful views personally, and how not to be offended by uncomfortable ideas. It also teaches its members how to deal with being offended."

Shakespeare Transforms France?

Times Online - Sunday Times
Through the amusing, sometimes hilarious story of how the French theatre slowly came to terms with Shakespeare, John Pemble of Bristol University aims to show how French culture and its view of the island across the water have changed during the past 250 years, and how important Shakespeare was in that transformation. He goes so far as to suggest that the long struggle to accommodate an alien they viewed as “an extraordinary genius yet deprived of elementary taste” helped redefine French culture.

No Hype Necessary

No Hype Necessary
As I sat there on Super Sunday—obviously over analyzing—Super Bowl hype, I got a lesson of my own. At about 6:15 pm, just after Presidents Bush and Clinton explained their tsunami relief efforts, Thomas Jefferson sat at his desk and began penning, "When in the course of human events…"!!