Mark Bauerlein

Mark Bauerlein is an emeritus professor of English at Emory University. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, the TLS, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

An AI Reckoning for the Humanities

Commentary The humanities have faced severe challenges in recent years—declining majors, identity politics, lowered standards—but none of them ...

Viewpoints May 27, 2026
Citizens Need Knowledge: Colleges (and Lawmakers) Must Act

Commentary When disruptions happen on college campuses because students find a speaker offensive, or when a poll appears ...

Viewpoints May 9, 2026
American Classics Worth Celebrating This July

American writers give a narrative, a drama, a protagonist, and a rhetoric to the civic principles we extol ...

Viewpoints April 5, 2026
The Consolations of the Declaration

Commentary In this 250th year of American independence, as current events seem too often a headlong train of ...

Viewpoints February 28, 2026
A Very Good Thing in Academe

Commentary Over the months, I have grumbled about one bad trend in higher education after another, from grade ...

Viewpoints February 3, 2026
To School for Unity

Commentary If you don’t have a core curriculum in the schools and colleges, if there isn’t a limited ...

Viewpoints January 31, 2026
Think on These Things

Commentary One of the best ingredients of a happier life involves no money, no power or prestige, no ...

Viewpoints January 8, 2026
The Read-Aloud Way

A love of reading starts in the home, when a parent reads to a child and the experience ...

Viewpoints December 16, 2025
AI Illiteracy

Kids aren’t writing anymore. Artificial intelligence does it for them.

Viewpoints December 1, 2025
Young Voters Want Benefits, Not Catchwords

Commentary On Nov. 7, the White House issued a proclamation in honor of Anti-Communism Week, reminding Americans of ...

Viewpoints November 24, 2025
Identity Focus on Campus Goes Back Many Decades

The memory of an all-white-male professoriate lingers in people's minds.

Viewpoints November 6, 2025
Grade Inflation Is Serious

The Education Department stated at the end of September that the rate of A grades has reached 'comical ...

Viewpoints October 16, 2025
Why the Declaration?

The Declaration of Independence didn’t design a government. Nevertheless, the Fourth of July has magical status.

Viewpoints October 2, 2025
Free Speech Isn’t Natural

Over the course of human history, the times and places of free speech are but a tiny slice ...

Opinion September 19, 2025
A New Commitment to Classicism in Washington

Civic buildings should convey a dignified message, not an irreverent and off-putting one, as if the architecture were ...

Opinion September 11, 2025
Big Money and Higher Ed

Commentary I started at UCLA in the fall of 1977, after graduating from a public high school in ...

Opinion August 28, 2025
AI Against the Humanities

The humanities demand focused attention on the original object: the thing itself, not simplified versions of it.

Viewpoints August 5, 2025
Florida Leads Breakthrough in Higher Education Accreditation Process

Commentary To most people, the accreditation process is an unknown. That’s unfortunate, because accreditation is one of the ...

Viewpoints July 7, 2025
The Sour Aftertaste of the Digital Age

Commentary As one state and school district after another bans cellphones in classrooms, we should pause for a ...

Viewpoints June 17, 2025
The DEI Persistence: Eliminating DEI Practices From Universities Will Be No Easy Task

Commentary President Trump’s executive order banning DEI practices from colleges and universities is only a step in the ...

Viewpoints June 10, 2025
The Public Backs Cutting Government Waste

Commentary If a business were losing money fast, sinking into debt, suffering from inefficiency, and engaging in some ...

Viewpoints May 19, 2025
Reminiscing About the Old English Major

Commentary When I was teaching in the university in the 1990s, I always had two or three kids ...

Viewpoints April 23, 2025
How Will College Presidents Deal With Trump’s DEI Order?

Commentary The executive order from President Donald Trump bearing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities has sent ...

Viewpoints March 25, 2025
Art in a Time of Revolution

Commentary Given what is happening in Washington right now, I don't think revolution is too strong a word. ...

Opinion February 23, 2025
Schools Need a Strong Reading Culture to Conquer the Decline in Reading Achievement

Commentary The latest National Center for Education Statistics (NAEP) scores came out last month. Once again, results for ...

Viewpoints February 10, 2025
Inauguration or Restoration?

Commentary There are a few single terms in the history of the U.S. presidency that left the country ...

Viewpoints January 22, 2025
The Return of Civilization

Commentary One of the most famous events of the Culture Wars of the 1980s took place at Stanford ...

Viewpoints January 3, 2025