In this conversation, Prof. Andrew Hayes accomplishes two tasks. First, he introduces us to the sources that have animated his leadership of the renewal of a university's core curriculum—including St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, Josef Pieper, and Alasdair Macintyre. Second, he gives a detailed account of the principal elements and purposes that give form to the unfolding of this renewal. Here he touches upon the importance of establishing a community of Core Fellows, the cultivation of wonder in our students, the perennial questions that will animate and give unity to the students' experience of the core, the core’s common texts, and the fundamental unity of knowledge. Finally, he offers insightful observations about liberal education understood as an unfolding conversation, the role of faculty members as custodians of tradition, how we should define “liberal education,”  and how should distinguish introductory courses that typically constitute general education at most institutions from “cognate” courses that should constitute a core properly ordered to liberal learning.

Details about UST's renewal of its Core, including goals, courses, and course sequences

Lecture by Dr. Andrew Hayes: "A Theology of Wonder: An Introduction to the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian"

Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture (with an introduction by T.S. Eliot)

Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Saint John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University and Rise and Progress of Universities