We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.

Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.

I do not support abortion rights. Although what I would support in this vexed area is not clear to me.

The first thing to ask when writing a sentence is 'What am I trying to do?'

The idea - the core idea of humanism - is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them.

The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.

This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.