by Perry Glasser English Department Conversations about the nature and value of the liberal arts grow shrill because the poles of the conversation encompass no middle ground. When no compromise is possible, collaboration is difficult. The best an academic community can hope for is uneasy mutual tolerance. Alas, when money is scarce, tolerance vanishes. The Traditionalist [...]

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By Michael A. Deere Philosophy Department I often joke with my students that the discipline of philosophy is perhaps the only one in which a living is made off of not knowing the answers to the questions that we pose.  Philosophers excel at not knowing.  One need only mark Socrates on this score: The wisdom [...]

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By Rick Branscomb English Department Rick Branscomb In his essay “Some Remarks on Humor,” noted New Yorker writer E. B. White wrote, “to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.” Courtesy UNH Magazine When I was in graduate school at the University of [...]

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By Kenneth Ardon Economics Professors Kenneth Ardon of the Salem State College Economics department and Lorri Krebs of the Department of Geography agreed to watch a YouTube video called “A Vision of Students Today” and share their thoughts on some of the questions raised by it. View Professor Krebs’ response. “A Vision of Students Today” [...]

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By William Cornwell Philosophy Department Professors Kenneth Ardon of the Salem State College Economics department and Lorri Krebs of the Department of Geography agreed to watch this video and share their thoughts on some of the questions raised by it. Professor Ardon’s Response Professor Krebs’ Response “A Vision of Students Today” is a four-minute-and-forty-four-second video [...]

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By J. D. Scrimgeour English Department As a teacher of writing at Salem State College, I hear a lot of stories: The mother who lost her husband early and was trying to stay enrolled, but at last couldn’t afford it; the woman who lived in a shelter with her infant; the man who had grown [...]

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