St. John's College

10/09/2026

What is education for? Victoria Kiper (AGI26) for the Future View section of the Wall Street Journal:

"Education, properly understood, is a practice in humility. It requires poring over difficult books and patiently listening to what others have to say. A good education requires the student to subordinate himself to something beyond his own preferences so that he may receive the wisdom of another. This posture is one that AI is functionally incapable of assuming.

A university’s ultimate aim shouldn’t be to graduate high-functioning employees. If we reduce education to this purpose, young people certainly have reason to fear what AI will make of their prospects. Instead, a university should form well-rounded, moral, virtuous and humble people devoted to the care of neighbor and country and eager for fuller participation in their communities.

Classical liberal-arts education fits this model and will take on a greater importance in the age of AI, even as utilitarian models for education wane. The liberal arts introduce students to the best that has been thought and said, teaching them to listen before they speak and inherit before they innovate. Only through a renewed encounter with Athens, Jerusalem and Rome can we recover the intellectual and moral glue that binds a society together despite technological and cultural changes.”

See the link below for the full piece:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/college-grads-vs-the-ai-job-apocalypse-8858fc7e

10/06/2026

How did the writings of “Publius” persuade Americans to support the new Constitution?

That question inspired St. John’s College tutor Harvey Flaumenhaft to author The Framework of the Federalist, which visually traces the arguments of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay into unified account of their political theory.

Flaumenhaft, who recently presented his work to the Polity during a talk and book-signing session at the St. John’s Annapolis Bookstore, argues that people “don’t read the papers as an articulated whole,” and that political actors tend to “pick out lines” that suit their agenda.

“With my book, you can see a detailed skeleton of the writers’ arguments,” he says. “After that, if you see certain lines in context, you see them very differently.”

Visit the link below to learn more about Flaumenhaft’s scholarship on the Federalist Papers.

https://www.sjc.edu/news/tutor-harvey-flaumenhaft-revisits-federalist-papers-amid-nations-250th-birthday

10/05/2026

Last summer, Liesl Geiger (A28) worked as a physics intern at the University of Virginia (UVA)! Here is how she describes the experience:

"I built a magnetic sensor for the lab, which meant learning a lot about circuits, coding in C++, and working within the specific interfaces UVA used.

From St. John's and high school, I knew a lot of theoretical physics, but I'd never really had the chance to put anything I knew into practice. Turning that theory into 'how is this circuit actually working?' was really difficult. It was a great learning experience."

Liesl's work was made possible by the St. John's Internship Program, which guarantees every student at least one fully funded internship!

09/29/2026

Last weekend, our Annapolis community welcomed more than 250 Johnnies back to campus to celebrate Homecoming.

From robust discussions of Burnt Norton and the echoes of Sicut Cervus in the Pendulum Pit, to waltz lessons and a room full of eager students networking with alumni in the workforce, the weekend offered countless opportunities to celebrate what makes St. John’s so special. The class of '76 also turned out to celebrate their 50-year reunion with quiet conversation and tea with President Sterling.

Thanks to our alumni for a wonderful weekend!

09/25/2026

How can we use technology to share the best of humanity?

That question led Jeremy Sheeler (AGI18) to cofound The Koinos Project, an online publication that highlights exceptional artists, ideas, and historical figures. Koinos recently collaborated with the Johnnie-founded band Summerfield, including Helen Wagner (A26) and Wylie Robbins Thorne-Thomsen (A26), to create an original music video entitled “The Canyon” and a podcast discussion about Wagner’s creative process.

Here is what Sheeler says about his initiative to feature Summerfield and other artists:

"As part of our attempt here at The Koinos to restore humanity to the humanities, we are launching a new series featuring artists who we feel represent the best of what humanity has to offer. The project will include music videos accompanied by a podcast discussion about the artists’ creative process, their inspiration, and the books and other works of art that have helped them to become who they are and do what they do.

"As the challenge of AI art continues to spread like the plague, we believe it is becoming imperative to not only appreciate the truly human aspect of art, but to be able to give an account of it — what the ancient Greeks called logos. Understanding why we do what we do will be as important as continuing to do it."

Visit the link below to listen to Sheeler's podcast with Wagner and Summerfield's single, "The Canyon."

https://www.koinosproject.org/p/koinos-cast-ballroom-sessions-1

09/24/2026

Freshmen at St. John’s recently finished Homer’s Odyssey, the second text every student reads after the Iliad. The Odyssey is a popular freshmen and senior essay topic for students who want to probe its characters, from πολύτροπος (wily) Odysseus and περίφρων (prudent) Penelope to ἀμύμων (blameless) Telemachus.

Given the excitement around Christopher Nolan's adaptation, St. John's College faculty have been invited by publications including the Christian Science Monitor and the Baltimore Banner to share their thoughts on one of the world's oldest myths.

Visit the link below to view a conversation featuring St. John’s College President J. Walter Sterling, Catholic University professor and artist Anika Prather (AGI09), and Bard College humanities professor and Homer translator Daniel Mendelsohn as they explore topics such as Homer’s place in contemporary pop culture, the dichotomous relationship between cinema and text, the mercurial nature of the epic hero Odysseus, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i2GtrUz0-c

09/23/2026

What does vanilla gelato have in common with higher education?

Quite a lot—at least, that’s what former University of Utah Dean of Humanities Hollis Robbins thinks. She compared a Wirecutter article by Annemarie Conte about the decline of Talenti gelato with problems in higher education, while naming the St. John’s model as a solution. She writes:

“[Conte] interviewed the founder [of Talenti] and a food scientist and tracked down old labels from friends who had kept old Talenti jars. She compared the listed ingredients over the past ten years. Many had changed, and not in a good way.”

The same thing that happened to the Talenti jar, Robbins argues, has happened in higher education classes. Enabled by laws that bar accreditors from investigating what happens inside college classes, universities have weakened the substance of their instruction while externally appearing as they always have. She writes:

“States and accreditation agencies look at the jar and the lid and nothing else... the U.S. Department of Education in 2011 decided to define ‘credit hour’ as “amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement.” No state requires anything like an actual ingredients list. Just a jar labeled gelato and a lid.”

When Robbins ultimately cites the St. John’s model as a solution to this crisis she says, “There are famously no majors, no departments, no catalog of interchangeable three-credit units... [Students] go there because it is different and the recipe has barely changed since 1937.”

Find her full thoughts on Substack below:

It might be the end of the shell game

09/22/2026

St. John’s College Santa Fe will be giving away classics FOR FREE to local high school students and their families who come to The BookMark, which is the St. John’s College bookstore, on October 3rd and 4th.

The list includes 50 historically censored classics, with titles ranging from the ancient world--such as the Odyssey, the Bible, and Plato's Symposium--to the modern world, including The Bluest Eye, Brave New World, and The House on Mango Street.

As part of the event, we invite students to think about why, for millennia, humans have tried to ban, cancel, and avoid thoughts with which we disagree? And how can we develop the intellectual courage and generosity of spirit to consider them, even if the end result is respectful disagreement?

Then, on Saturday, from 4-5 p.m., we invite New Mexicans up to the campus coffee shop for a tribute to New Mexico's most famous banned classic: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. Come hear why this book has touched so many people and why it was it was so consistently banned across the American Southwest in the 1980s and 90s.

We expect this event to be popular and parking on campus is limited, so come early in case you need to park in our overflow lot and catch our shuttle. Or bike to campus! We have many places around campus to lock your bike.

09/21/2026

What book is so great that it makes a professor forget to pick up his daughter after ballet practice? So engrossing that ordinary college students forget about their phones?

An article by St. Thomas University professor Matt Dinan names Dostoevsky’s Brother’s Karamazov as one such book. “When I’d enter our seminar room,” Dinan writes, “I’d hear my students chattering excitedly about Dmitry Karamazov’s wild love life and self-destructive partying as if he lived in the dorm with them.”

Dinan goes on to argue that we should not attribute today’s educational woes simply to students’ lack of ability. Instead, we must reinvigorate the passion that love of wisdom requires. For Dinan, that model starts at the top. He says:

“We teachers must remain students—and model what we want to see. We need to recover the passion that drove us to our books, to the lab. We need to embody love of learning for its own sake against the pervasive message that higher education should be vocational.”

St. John’s has spent decades embodying this love. That’s why professors here are called tutors; they journey alongside students through the Great Books as part of an endless conversation instead of standing above it. And they’ve been ranked by The Princeton Review for 2027 as the second most accessible in the nation.

Read Dinan’s piece in the New York Times below (paywall):
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/opinion/higher-ed-dostoevsky-attention.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8VA.tAId.lXahcNNij0ic&smid=url-share

09/21/2026