Letter from the Director
May 2009
On April 30, BC’s Provost Bert Garza, together with Fr. Jim Keenan of the Theology Department, held a panel discussion dealing with the results of the two year initiative they sponsored on the Catholic Intellectual Traditions. I realized making my presentation how much of a role the CIT played in the Boisi Center’s activities this year.
The most visible part of that role was our decision to have members of the CIT seminar on “Ways of Knowing,” which I chaired, speak to our luncheon groups. Because of their presentations, we had the best attended lunches since we began the Boisi Center. We were also able to sponsor other events around the general topic, in particular Stephen Pope’s lecture on evolution and its implications for Christian ethics.
While I’ll miss the cross-disciplinary conversations around the seminar table with my colleagues, this project is not really at an end. We’ve been wrestling in our last few meetings with the future of our work, and it’s been exciting to hear faculty discussions about providing leadership to our community by extending the conversation to students and other faculty members at BC. We’ll see what faculty seminars, artistic endeavors, events or even publications emerge over the months to come. A new website is also being developed to communicate specific reflections on the CIT. In the meantime, many of the seminar participants’ lectures related to the CIT can be found on the Boisi Center website: www.bc.edu/boisi.
This summer the Boisi Center will host another seminar, “Religious Diversity and the Common Good,” sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Fifteen college teachers from around the country will be in residence for six weeks discussing readings, making presentations and listening to guest lecturers. Although I have yet to meet them, on paper they are a truly outstanding group.
My book The Future of Liberalism was published in February and is already into its second printing. I’ve done book tour events in the Twin Cities, Madison, New York and Washington. A panel discussion on the book was held at Brookings Institution featuring William Galston, Ross Douthat and E. J. Dionne. Another was held here at BC featuring Mary Sarah Bilder and Dan Mahoney. The book was reviewed widely and generally with enthusiasm. A paperback version will appear in the winter.
The other big news on the book front is that this summer Baylor University Press will be publishing the results of our 2007 conference on gambling. Erik Owens and I are the editors, and the book is called Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape.
This has been a rough year financially for higher education – indeed for everyone. Still we expect to have as full a slate of events as possible for next year, and I will be reporting on them at the appropriate time.
Alan Wolfe