Archives: Newsletter Post

The clinical psychology student recited the facts of the case as if it were a formula. That’s what she had been trained to do, what her peers and professors expected. There was probably a time when this student wondered about the complex and human questions that might lead a person to the moment of diagnosis, […]

In Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, Elizabeth Oldfield uses the seven deadly sins as a framework for exploring practices that can shape character and provide consolation in the midst of global upheaval and troubling times. Oldfield is a Christian and tells her own story of finding and losing and finding faith […]

In this essay, Michelle Weise, Chief Impact Officer of The Kern Family Foundation and co-host of “A Life Worth Working,” muses on a new “understanding of calling: one that embraces the messiness, imperfection, and circuitous routes through which people forge meaningful lives.” These are the spaghetti pathways, and they appear to define our working lives today. […]

What if high-quality, virtue-based leadership development could reach anyone, anywhere? Leading with Character, a free online course, has begun to scale character-based leadership training across cultures and continents. The course is a collaboration between the Oxford Character Project, Legatum, and the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard. Its roots, however, stretch back to the pandemic, when […]

Telling the difficult truths about calling—that calling involves bliss and sacrifice—provides a revolutionary way to approach it, not as some idealized or glorified notion but as a complicated, ambiguous even painful reality that deserves to be understood in all its complexity and glory. p.16 Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s latest book begins with a bit of a confession: […]

In her welcome letter to the latest issue of Virtues & Vocations: Higher Education for Human Flourishing, Suzanne Shanahan invites us into a conversation about the meanings of work. Musing with Alain de Botton, Shanahan wonders not only how we select meaningful work but how we interpret labor we love. Read more of Shanahan’s welcome […]

It’s Friday early in the fall semester, and a group of students from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business board a bus for what Professor Andy Hoffman calls “a four-hour ride into the woods.” At a retreat center, they surrender their phones and laptops—returned only on Sunday—and prepare for a weekend focused not […]

Described both at the “Dutch Wunderkind of new ideas” and “one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers,” historian and journalist, Rutger Bregman is the best-selling author of three books. His latest book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference is newly out in English. It is an aspirational call to action […]

In this essay, Cristy Guleserian, Executive Director of Principled Innovation at Arizona State University, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, reflects on how we can foster campus cultures that individuals and communities. She asks, “How can we hold strong convictions and practice genuine civility and civic grace? As educators, are we modeling and encouraging humility and […]

In 1995, Alabama became one of the first states to legislate character education. The mandate was simple: ten minutes a day focused on 25 traits. Implementation, however, was left up to individual educators—many of whom, like current University of Alabama professor Ben White, barely noticed its effects. “I went through school during that time,” White […]