Copyright 2026 Thomas Hibbs Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:16:40 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Thomas Hibbs :: Writings https://thomashibbs.org tshibbs@aol.com (Thomas Hibbs) webmaster@pundicity.com en-us https://thomashibbs.org/31387/debate-is-essential-for-learning Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:00:00 EST A century ago, the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard and one of the founders of the NAACP, W.E.B. DuBois published The Gift of Black Folk, a book that was commissioned by the Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus, as part of... https://thomashibbs.org/31388/bob-dylan-jacques-maritain-artistic-integrity Wed, 13 Aug 2025 09:00:00 EST In a pivotal scene in the recent film A Complete Unknown, a young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), celebrated as a voice of the 1960s protest movement, complains about the expectation that he should keep playing popular songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" for... https://thomashibbs.org/28350/complete-unknown-tom-wilson Sat, 18 Jan 2025 09:00:00 EST In a pivotal scene in the critically acclaimed new film A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan, Dylan and an assembled group of band members are in the studio about to record "Like a Rolling Stone," the song that defines... https://thomashibbs.org/28126/terrence-malick-and-the-examined-life Thu, 1 Nov 2024 09:00:00 EST In his book God, Philosophy, Universities, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that "neither the university nor philosophy is any longer seen as engaging the questions" of "plain persons." These questions include: "What is our place in the order of things? Of what... https://thomashibbs.org/28347/anxiety-has-plans Mon, 21 Oct 2024 09:00:00 EST Amid what was otherwise a disappointing summer season for Hollywood movies, Inside Out 2 was one of the few exceptions. A sequel that takes its main character Riley into puberty and features characters representing a wide range of Riley's emotions, the... https://thomashibbs.org/27991/newman-challenges-catholic-education Tue, 13 Aug 2024 09:00:00 EST That alone is liberal knowledge, which stands on its own pretensions, which is independent of sequel, expects no complement, refuses to be informed (as it is called) by any end, or absorbed into any art, in order duly to present itself to our... https://thomashibbs.org/27990/there-is-no-should-in-grief Mon, 12 Aug 2024 09:00:00 EST The Chosen, whose fourth season out of a planned seven has recently been released on streaming, continues to be enormously popular. It also continues to depict central scenes from the Gospels—including this season's portrayal of the raising of Lazarus—in... https://thomashibbs.org/27956/who-do-you-say-that-he-is Mon, 29 Jul 2024 09:00:00 EST In the early 16th century, Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, designed a method of meditation that came to be known as the Spiritual Exercises. The meditations involve a "composition of place," a reconstructing in the imagination of a scene from... https://thomashibbs.org/27833/a-guide-for-political-detox Sat, 8 Jun 2024 09:00:00 EST "Our politics is sick," writes Michael Wear in his new book, The Spirit of Our Politics, in an observation that seems difficult to refute. If polls are any indication, Americans, facing the upcoming presidential election with a deep sense of foreboding,... https://thomashibbs.org/27750/counter-cultural-silence Thu, 11 Apr 2024 09:00:00 EST The philosopher Pascal once quipped, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Pascal's deliberate hyperbole contains a truth that is perhaps more evident in our time than in his. While we seem to find... https://thomashibbs.org/27397/suicide-christmas-movie Sat, 16 Dec 2023 09:00:00 EST While debate continues over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, there seems little doubt that the classic film It's a Wonderful Life deserves that classification. The film has long been a staple of TV viewing during the holidays, in part because its... https://thomashibbs.org/27168/helping-college-students-launch Sat, 26 Aug 2023 09:00:00 EST In a lecture on career and calling as part of a Baylor summer program in Washington D.C., George Mason University psychology professor Lauren Kuykendall stressed to the undergraduates in the audience the limits of introspection in discerning future paths... https://thomashibbs.org/26935/jacques-maritain Fri, 28 Apr 2023 09:00:00 EST Today we remember a profound thinker who continues to remind us of the danger of instrumentalized art in the service of merely ideological ends—and the role of hospitality, personal influence, in the upholding of truth. "On this particular day ... we had... https://thomashibbs.org/26870/valvano-north-carolina-state Mon, 3 Apr 2023 09:00:00 EST It's been 40 years since one of the greatest upsets in NCAA tournament basketball history, when North Carolina State University beat the highly favored University of Houston and future Hall-of-Famers Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon in the title game.... https://thomashibbs.org/26837/irish-grief Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:00:00 EST Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the 1970s, I was surrounded by multi-generational Irish families whose capacity for storytelling and singing left a deep impression on me. When, in the last few years, my parents died a year apart, the...