Dr. Jacob Imam of The College of St. Joseph the Worker and New Polity joins Jason to talk about a school that refuses to choose between the life of the mind and the life of the hands. The College of St. Joseph the Worker trains men in both the Catholic intellectual tradition and the skilled trades, graduating students with two certifications and no debt.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Dr. Imam's origin story: raised by a lapsed Muslim father and an evangelical Protestant mother in Seattle, and the conversion that followed
• The founding vision of the College of St. Joseph the Worker
• The ancient pagan contempt for manual labor, from Aristotle's Politics to Cicero's On Duties, and how Christ's years at a carpenter's bench eradicated all of it
• Why the liberal arts and the manual arts don't compete but strengthen each other
• The crisis in American construction, the rootlessness at its root, and the debt every graduate carries back to the community that formed him

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 01:29: Jacob Imam's Origin Story
• 13:09: What Is the College of St. Joseph the Worker?
• 16:41: How Higher Education Has Failed
• 19:56: The Ancient Case Against Manual Labor—and Why Christ Changed Everything
• 28:45: The Active and Contemplative Life
• 32:37: Students Arriving at the College
• 35:33: The Trades Crisis: Why Now
• 37:28: Why Modern Homes Are Built to Fail
• 49:42: Going Away to Come Back Better

Resources Mentioned:

• College of St. Joseph the Worker
• New Polity

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios