For the most part, history is more complicated and more nuanced than we give it credit for. Hindsight serves to soften and streamline the narrative. Understanding contemporary motivations requires a ...

Modern societies would be impossible without mass-scale production of many man-made materials. We could have an affluent civilization that provides plenty of food, material comforts, and access to ...

Generations of Columbia College students have been introduced to the philosophy that shaped the Western world through the Core Curriculum course Contemporary Civilization. In the spring of 2021, I ...

I WILL start from some familiar phrases. “ We need a modern education for a modern world.” “We have to prepare our youth to live in contemporary society and face its problems.” Such sayings, at first ...