The "Whiffenpoofs" are assembled "with their glasses raised on high," as the nostalgic Yale College hymn goes. The University of Maine fight-song resounds: "Lift the steins to dear old Maine…" That...

Thanks to a kind article by Lauren Weber ("Recovering From Jaw Cancer, Schall Will Miss Fall Semester," THE HOYA, Aug. 31, 2010, A1), many know that I am out for the fall semester due to a combination...

A professor who has been many years at a school is often asked by visitors: “Do you notice any difference between current students and those from previous decades?” I always answer that question pretty...

I love data. This should come as no surprise to any student who has taken my classes. I tend to pepper my lectures with graphs, charts, maps and dynamic data visualizations. Sometimes I use them to...

Schall holds the minority opinion that used bookstores may be more important to civilization than universities. You ask, of course, where would used bookstores get their used books if there were no professors...

We crossed over the verdant hills of Nairobi and made our way north in a small propeller plane built in the 1970s. There were 12 of us from Georgetown cramped in the plane, about to embark on a two-week...

Every Wednesday evening, I join a group of seniors for dinner and conversation about life before, during and after Georgetown. Senior year, with all of its transitions, is a natural time for such deep,...

Like many of you, I awoke last Monday to astonishing news: Benedict the XVI was going to resign his papacy. It has been over a week since that news shook the world and still the questions keep coming at...

Every semester I ask the students in my Jesuit Education course to read an essay written by Fr. Timothy Healy, S.J., on the occasion of Georgetown's bicentennial in 1989. Fr. Healy was president of...

For Christmas, a friend sent me a pleasant book with well-known facts that everyone gets wrong. For example, "Where is Scotland Yard?" The answer is "Scotland Yard is in England." Another example...

In the "Phaedo," the dialogue of Socrates' last day, a question arises about Socrates' burial after he is to drink the fatal hemlock. His friend, Crito, is fussing about what he will do with the body....

Around this time every year, seniors drop by my office with the same anxious expression and the same pointed question: "What am I going to do next year?" They've just taken the LSAT or GRE, interview...