Anchored by the Classic Learning Test

On this special episode of the Anchored podcast, Jeremy is joined by six CLT10 Award Winners from prior years (this distinction is offered to students with the highest scores on the CLT10). Jeremy and the students dive deep into questions and topics concerning what makes a good education, how speech and debate informs a deeper understanding of various worldviews, the ways in which the classical re...

Michael Farris is the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), the founder of Patrick Henry College, and the current president and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom. On this episode, he discusses the cultural environment of the early 1980s which acted as the impetus for HSLDA’s founding—every state Attorney General considered homeschooling unlawful. He also discusses the c...

Dr. Joe Rigney is the second president of Bethlehem College & Seminary (Took office June 1, 2021). On this episode, he discusses tenets of C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, to include commentary on the destructive nature of modern turns toward subjectivism in philosophy and education generally. Dr. Rigney also discusses Lewis' use of the term "Tao" to demonstrate the concep...

Dr. Glenn Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. In this episode, Dr. Loury discusses his response to a letter written by Brown University President Christina Paxson, in which she noted that structures of power and histories of oppression and prejudice define American society. Of the letter he wrote: "it asserted controversia...

Education historian Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berkshire join Jeremy to discuss their book, The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School  in which they describe policies and political undertakings such as school vouchers, attacks on teachers’ unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, etc., as part of a larger organized effort to...

Dr. Stephen Blackwood has held fellowships at Harvard, Cambridge, and the University of Toronto, and is the founding president of Ralston College in Savannah, GA. In this episode, he discusses his childhood growing up on on Prince Edward Island and the ways in which his formative years taught him that human life does not exist in the abstract, but rather in the particulars—places, times, landscape...

Faith Moore is a freelance writer, editor, and a stay-at-home mom. She has been published in The Wall Street Journal , The New York Daily News , The Daily Wire , and more. She joins Jeremy to discuss her recent Federalist article, "Instead of Canceling Snow White, Learn to Read Fairy Tales." In this episode, she discusses her response to the authors of an SFGate article in which they des...

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal , and a New York Times bestselling author. In this week's episode, Heather discusses her time as a graduate student in comparative literature at Yale and the events that led her to uncover the faults in deconstruction and other postmodernist theories. She illustrates how current...

Brent Everett Dickinson is a multi-disciplinary conceptual artist and associate professor of art at Azusa Pacific University in California.  In 2017, Dickinson founded the MMHTT (Marcel Maus Hermeneutical Think Tank), a multimedia web project driven by philosophical concepts such as power, authorship, immanence, performativity, and deterritorialization. In this week's discussion, Dickinson de...

Erika Donalds is the founder and CEO of the Optima Foundation—its goal is the successful launch of Hillsdale College Barney Charter School Initiative classical academies and other schools of excellence across the state of Florida. She also served on the Advisory Committee on Education and Workforce Development for Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In this episode, she joins Jeremy to discuss the even...

Dr. Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), joins Jeremy to discuss the recent NAS report, "Corrupting the College Board: Confucius Institutes and K-12 education." He discusses the connection between the College Board and Hanban, the Beijing-based headquarters of the Confucius Institutes—an organization that provides Chinese government-funded language and cul...

Sean-Michael Pigeon, Young Voices Contributor and Yale University student, joins Jeremy to discuss his recent USA Today op-ed, "Don't Blame the Tests: Getting Rid of Standardized Testing Means Punishing the Poor." He discusses studies over the past decade which examined score disparities in relation to socio-economic status and led to public questions concerning higher education acc...

Elias Moo, one of the youngest Catholic school superintendents in the country (Archdiocese of Denver), joins Jeremy  to discuss a trend of recent years in which Catholic schools attempt to replicate a utilitarian public school model, one which increasingly dehumanizes students in its attempt to make education production-focused.  Elias makes the case that Catholic schools should be committed to th...

Eric Cook is the Head of School at Covenant Classical School and President of the Society for Classical Learning (SCL). He joins Jeremy to discuss classical education in the 21st century and the ways in which teaching in a public school led him to the classical education movement. He also examines the holistic nature of classical education, which has informed his endeavors as SCL president to make...

Kevin Clark (founder of the Ecclesial Schools Initiative) and Ravi Jain (calculus and physics teacher at the Geneva School) join Jeremy to discuss their book The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education, as well as the classical education renewal movement in modern society. They begin by briefly discussing the history of 20th century education, to include the exportati...

Dr. Anika Prather joins Jeremy with a group of her humanities students from Howard University—Nia Anderson, Joseph Andrew Jordan, and Joshua Hughes. The students discuss the meaning of classical education within the African-American intellectual tradition, to include such important figures as Phillis Wheatley, Anna Julia Cooper, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor Prather and...

Dr. Douglas Henry, Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University, joins Jeremy to discuss the impact of great works of literature, politics, and philosophy on both his own academic formation and in the larger life of the Honors College.  Dean Henry discusses the college's commitment to the integration of faith and learning and how this has led the college to become not only favored by Bapti...

Jon Balsbaugh, President of Trinity Schools, joins Jeremy to discuss the important distinction that separates schooling from an education striving for "human awakening." Jeremy and Jon also discuss C.S. Lewis' vision of education, his understanding of the troubling trajectory of education, and the importance of the training of affections. Jon further illustrates the relevancy of the...

Frank Bruni of The New York Times once dubbed St. John's College the "most contrarian college in America." On this episode, St. John's College President Pano Kanelos joins Jeremy to discuss the history of the school (one of the oldest colleges in the U.S.) and the academic reorientation that took place there in the early 20th century, one inspired by the Great Books movement fa...

Keith Nix, Head of School at Veritas in Richmond, VA, joins Jeremy with Sam Davis, a Veritas student. On this episode, Keith discusses the history of Veritas School, the beginnings of its historic campus in Richmond, and its mission in classical education. The conversation moves to architecture and its relation to learning—how does physical space impact imagination and academic outcomes? Keith als...

Note: This is Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. West. Cornel West begins this episode by responding to a question from the producer: has the advancement of technology created a culture in which the desire for wisdom is supplanted by the demand for instant access to information? He also discusses modern conceptions of identity and the way in which these conceptions have become detached from large...

Note: This is Part 1 of our conversation with Dr. West. Renowned public philosopher Dr. Cornel West joins Jeremy to share his insight into the current cultural moment and efforts to remove the Classics from school curricula. He discusses his famous friendship with Princeton's Robert P. George and highlights the troubles that arise when friendships hinge only on ideological agreement, and how...

Note: This is Part 2 of an episode co-release detailing responses to the #DisruptTexts movement which caught national attention. Meghan Cox Gurdon is an author and weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal , where she writes on children's books. Her recent op-ed in the WSJ, entitled "Even Homer Gets Mobbed," outlined efforts by the group #DisruptTexts to have works of the Western...

Note: This is Part 1 of an episode co-release detailing responses to the #DisruptTexts movement which caught national attention. As Superintendent of Schools for the Boston Archdiocese, Thomas Carroll joins Jeremy to discuss the challenges that he faced in his new role during a global pandemic.  Amid public statements by Massachusetts' three largest teachers unions indicating that schools wou...

Dr. Greg Thompson is the Executive Director of Voices Underground, an initiative to build a national memorial to the Underground Railroad,  and he is a Research Fellow in African American Cultural Heritage at Lincoln University. He joins Jeremy to discuss his recent response to Rod Dreher's new book Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, to include the notion that it imports a f...