The Death of the Mind

By Ryan McCarl / October 6, 2026

The mass adoption of artificial intelligence by the University is antithetical to the goals of liberal education.

Presidents

By Ryan McCarl / September 25, 2008

Each helped to shape the academic and fiscal vision of the U of C

Vetoing Memorial Day

By Ryan McCarl / May 30, 2008

If "supporting the troops" means anything at all, it means respecting soldiers as individuals and as citizens, not simply as instruments of war.

Nuclear abstraction

By Ryan McCarl / May 16, 2008

[img id=”80614″ align=”alignleft”] One Wednesday afternoon last quarter, I was sitting in John Mearsheimer’s “Seminar on Great Power Politics,” discussing nuclear deterrence and strategy. In technical, jargon-laden language, students discussed issues like “counterforce” and “countervalue” nuclear weapons (counterforce weapons are targeted at other countries’ nuclear stockpiles, while countervalue weapons are targeted at their cities), nuclear...

Bring the mind back to life

By Ryan McCarl / April 28, 2008

[img id=”80547″ align=”alignleft”] The “examined life” is a thing more often discussed than lived at the U of C. For all our questioning, one thing that goes largely unquestioned is the U of C’s own educational philosophy and academic culture—as well as the actual quality of the lives of students living in that culture. Is...

Bad council

By Ryan McCarl / April 14, 2008

[img id=”80479″ align=”alignleft”] This week, after a small group of U of C activists spoke to an alderman about the issue, the Chicago City Council condemned the University’s decision not to divest from Sudan. The scolding was a bit late in coming; the University made its decision in early 2007 and most members of the...

Playing fair with admissions

By Ryan McCarl / March 7, 2008

[img id=”80430″ align=”alignleft”] In his Tuesday column (“More Than a Game,” 3/4/08), Matt Barnum takes issue with the process that U of C athletic coaches follow when recruiting student-athletes. Specifically, Barnum does not believe that coaches should be allowed to lobby the admissions office on behalf of prospective students who they believe would be a...

Primary school: an over-the-Hill senator

By Ryan McCarl / February 21, 2008

After winning the “Democrats Abroad” primary on Thursday, Barack Obama can truly be considered a world leader. The two-and-a-half delegate victory increased his winning streak to 11 over Hillary Clinton, and although the media continue to treat the Obama–Clinton race as a nail-biter, these contests haven’t even been close: Obama has won each of them...

Liberal education provides tools to fight injustice

By Ryan McCarl / February 8, 2008

The vast majority of the stories carried in the daily news will be washed away by time and forgotten by posterity. This observation has led many great minds to conclude that there is no value to be had in a mastery of current affairs. Why read The Economist when we can read Thucydides or Gibbon?...

Hope not so audacious after all

By Ryan McCarl / January 25, 2008

Hillary Clinton’s victories in the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries have given supporters of Barack Obama reason for concern. The process is far from over, and it will be some time yet before the Democratic Party has a nominee. But one thing is clear: The euphoria that we Obama supporters felt after his comfortable victory...

After college, follow your heart, not your wallet

By Ryan McCarl / January 11, 2008

For students finishing college this year, the search for graduate schools and entry-level jobs is well underway. We are accustomed to imagining ourselves in a variety of future situations, and the fact that we will soon have to close some of these options off forever is disturbing to us. I never imagined how much of...

Objectivism requires dose of humility

By Ryan McCarl / November 27, 2007

I discovered Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as a curious ninth-grader looking for something to read. I stumbled across the book randomly; my mother had an unread copy from her college years in a box in the basement. Atlas Shrugged, despite the scathing reviews that greeted its publication, remains in print after 50 years and will...

Grading runs counter to U of C’s educational values

By Ryan McCarl / November 13, 2007

Most students come to the U of C because they want to be part of a community where intellectual exchange is a significant part of daily life. It is this basic commitment to education—education as something more than just a diploma—that gives the University its distinctive character. With that in mind, we should seriously consider...

What is it good for? War takes toll on generation

By Ryan McCarl / October 29, 2007

War is expensive. It is an outrageous waste of human life and economic resources, and the true cost of a war—including the opportunity costs associated with the loss of untold numbers of lives and livelihoods and the use of enormous amounts of capital for purposes of destruction rather than production—is incalculable. There is a popular...

Certainty is a luxury none of us has

By Ryan McCarl / October 16, 2007

What is God, and does It exist? What is the meaning and purpose of human life? What is the ultimate source of morality? These are unanswerable questions; you can put ten of the smartest people in the world in a room and ask them to answer them, and you might well receive ten different responses....

Don’t let Iran become the next Iraq

By Ryan McCarl / October 2, 2007

America is stumbling toward another disastrous war in the Middle East. With every small escalation in the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, the likelihood that the two nations will end up at war increases. It is tempting to dismiss the idea of starting yet another war as madness. The ground forces that make up...

Right-wing optimism in Iraq is misplaced

By Ryan McCarl / September 19, 2007

Over the summer, Americans were bombarded with a stream of contradictory reports about the progress, or lack thereof, of the Iraq War. The war has dragged on for four and a half years, and most politicians and commentators have long since thrown their support behind one perspective or another; unsurprisingly, war supporters tend to be...

It’s about time to erase the Blackboard

By Ryan McCarl / May 22, 2007

When I am talking to family and friends about the things that make the U of C unique, I often mention that most of our undergraduate classrooms do not have whiteboards. Our focus, this implies, is on the things that matter: ideas and arguments. We don’t mistake fancy technology and “modern” classrooms for a good...

Want my Coke? Then pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

By Ryan McCarl / May 8, 2007

The great miracle of capitalism is the bewildering array of choices it offers to consumers, entrepreneurs, and workers. Capitalism, and the prosperity it has created, makes us freer by giving us choices. I can travel cheaply, communicate quickly, access more ideas, eat and drink anything I want, purchase the clothes I want, and choose the...

America should embrace pragmatic politics

By Ryan McCarl / April 27, 2007

Many of the greatest policy coups in American political history have been the products of a leader’s willingness to transcend partisan ideologies in search of pragmatic solutions. President Clinton—the consummate pragmatist—was able to pass historic welfare reform and free trade agreements over the objections of his political base. And President Bush’s centrist plan for immigration...

Americans’ big ego problem is obvious with Iraq war

By Ryan McCarl / April 10, 2007

Whenever we are confronted with a foreign policy disaster on the scale of the Iraq War, we must wonder how smart and experienced people in Washington can beget such abominations with their ideas and decisions. What can account for the hubristic decision to invade Iraq? And what can explain the continued eagerness of some among...

The delusions of neoconservatism

By Ryan McCarl / March 6, 2007

Last week, the Chicago Friends of Israel sponsored a talk by Richard Perle, a neoconservative who has served in various defense-related positions in the U.S. government and in hawkish think tanks. Perle espouses a view of international relations that is often stunningly naïve and that has been thoroughly discredited by America’s recent experience in Iraq....

What’s wrong with the Core?

By Ryan McCarl / February 27, 2007

The Core curriculum is at the center of student identity at the University of Chicago. It was one of the reasons I first developed an interest in coming here: The admissions literature thoroughly convinced me of the utility of the Coreand the promise of a liberal education. Today, however, I am a Core skeptic. In...

Let’s learn the right lessons from Iraq

By Ryan McCarl / February 13, 2007

The failure of the American adventure in Iraq has prompted much soul-searching in foreign policy circles, but precious few are looking below the surface of our recent troubles. What are the lessons policymakers and citizens should draw from the American experience in Iraq? Surely the right lesson is not to “send in more troops earlier...

Is there a point to letting history haunt you?

By Ryan McCarl / January 30, 2007

I am haunted by history. After a full day of reading about car bombs in Baghdad, studying the Pacific Theater of World War II, and listening to lectures about the Great Leap Forward famine in China, how could I walk home at night without my thoughts being burdened by war and politics? Conventional wisdom says...

Escalation of troops in Iraq is a tragic mistake for U.S.

By Ryan McCarl / January 19, 2007

Last week, President Bush addressed the nation to announce his intention of escalating the conflict in Iraq by sending an additional 21,000 American troops into that country in a last-ditch effort to repair the Iraqi polity and stem the tide of civil strife and sectarian violence unleashed by the careless American invasion of 2003. The...

America must talk to its adversaries

By Ryan McCarl / November 21, 2006

The average citizen, who takes little or no notice of foreign affairs, may read or hear about international conflicts and wonder why on earth statesmen can’t just sit down together, look each other squarely in the eye, and work things out. Individuals have their disagreements, and they don’t usually resort to bombs and bullets to...

Participating in the partisan problem

By Ryan McCarl / November 7, 2006

I realized something unfortunate this month: I have become, at least for the duration of this election season, a full-fledged Democratic party liberal. Although I believe in theory that nonpartisanship is a good ideal to aspire to and that we should judge each issue on its merits, I have noticed that distinct feeling of partisan...

Let’s learn to take each other seriously

By Ryan McCarl / October 24, 2006

The “golden rule” of theory testing, according to international relations scholar Joseph Grieco, is to be hard on your own approach and easy on alternatives. No academic paper—in any discipline—can make an impact on or contribute to a serious debate unless it grapples with the best arguments that can be used against it. That is...

Iraq war demonstrates limits of U.S. power

By Ryan McCarl / October 9, 2006

We often hear it said that America is the most powerful country in the world, the foremost superpower on the international scene. Supporters and critics alike of American foreign-policy decisions generally agree on this point. Whether America is “the indispensable nation” and a force for human liberty or an arrogant empire with imperialist leanings, there...

Da Vinci Code isn’t a threat to Christianity

By Ryan McCarl / May 23, 2006

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has topped bestseller lists, entertained millions of readers, and inspired a major film as well as a host of books investigating whether the novel’s claims about history, art, mathematics, the Catholic Church, and Jesus Christ are true. Not everyone, however, is a fan of the book. The Catholic Church...

United States ought to swallow its pride and deal with Iran diplomatically

By Ryan McCarl / April 28, 2006

Americans and their representatives are right to be nervous about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the fanatical pronouncements of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, the threat that Iran’s nuclear program poses to American security has been greatly overblown, and talk of war as a solution to the problem is unrealistic and ill-advised. Every state makes mistakes...

Objectivist speaker dismisses faith, counterd with his own fanaticism

By Ryan McCarl / October 28, 2004

The terrorists of 9/11 represent the “essence” of religion, according to Andrew Bernstein, and “the quest for heaven leads to hell on earth.” On Thursday evening, the Objectivist Club brought in Bernstein, professor of philosophy at Pace University and member of the Ayn Rand Institute, to give a talk entitled “Religion vs. Morality.” Roughly three...