Having just come back from a very enjoyable day-and-a-half at Davidson College (which has a beautiful campus, by the way, about a half-hour from Charlotte, North Carolina), I was particularly struck by how many students turned out for a talk on Nietzsche on a Tuesday evening (and how many asked questions, and good questions), and also by the College's commitment to humanistic studies, as evidenced not only by the strong philosophy faculty (about which I had known prior to visiting), but also by the size and quality of the German department, an area sadly neglected by some colleges, even though it is central to a serious program of humanistic studies, given the centrality of the German language, and German scholarship and culture, to every field in the humanities. I was particularly impressed by a student who told me she had transferred from a well-known private research university to Davidson because she felt there was too much pre-professional pressure at her former school, and she wanted to be in an environment more supportive of humanistic study for its own sake. So kudos to Davidson College!
My former colleagues at another university in Middle East have also been moved to online teaching indefinitely, with the students…



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