Jeff Abernathy

Much media attention has recently been given to the Thiel Fellowships, an effort described by The New York Times as “one of the most unusual experiments in higher education today.” But -- in these critical years for their development as persons -- will these young people spend time thinking about the meaning of their lives, about their moral obligations to fellow human beings?

Last weekend we came far too close to every college president’s nightmare.

A few years ago, as I was contemplating a step from provost to president, I asked a college president how he managed the demands of the job with young children who were just then entering high school. He replied that he had never found a satisfactory answer to the question but that ensuring daily conversations with his children, no matter where he was in the world, and building time into the schedule, were key.

When our communications director suggested that I “star” in a jesting video for an event celebrating the College’s 125th anniversary last spring, I was extremely apprehensive. As an undergraduate, I was without question the worst actor in a troupe that included a stray cat, blind in one eye. I did not make a keepsake of the review that described my acting as “wooden,” but I well remember it. It should not have come as a surprise for a reserved, self-conscious English major, not given, in the end, to theatrics.