On Being’s Krista Tippett

The Word ‘Civil’ Remains So Fraught

Environmental Activist and Hip-Hop Artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (Xochimilco) | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a National Humanities Medalist, and a New York Times-bestselling author. After studying theology at Yale Divinity School, she launched the weekly public radio show “Speaking of Faith,” which became the podcast “On Being with Krista Tippett.” Before joining the panel for “How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future?”—Zócalo’s final public program in the Mellon-supported “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?” inquiry—she joined us (straight off a plane) in the green room to chat about Star Trek, being in community, and stretching …

November 3, 2023

The Historian and the Murderer

A Croatian Historian’s Death Ultimately Put Our Profession on Trial

by Dominique K. Reill | June 10, 2021

On May 14, 2018, I was led into a nondescript courtroom in Kew Gardens, Queens to testify at a murder trial. I am a historian who loves details, and the …

“Frivolous” Humanities Helped Prisoners Survive in Communist Romania

Covertly Studying Language and Literature Connected Captives and Freed Their Minds

By Irina Dumitrescu | May 25, 2016

In a recent New York Times article on the movement to promote university majors promising higher employment and income, Anthony Carnevale, a professor at Georgetown University, sums up the utilitarian …

The Humanities Aren’t As Dead As You Think

But They Need to Integrate With Other Disciplines to Prosper in an Era of More Students and More Majors

by Jennifer Summit | August 19, 2013

What’s happened to the humanities—once the center, and now the wallflower, of American higher education? The subject of their decline and fall has become a familiar lament. As New York …

Teach Art. It’s the Law.

I Used to Try To Persuade Communities That Arts Education Was Valuable. Then I Realized I Needed to Be More Direct.

by Carl Schafer | July 24, 2013

I started my career as an instrumental music teacher in 1957. This was in the Ontario-Montclair School District. Since then, I’ve been a music consultant, teacher, supervisor of a visual …

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