Light & Truth

Episode 2 - What Are the Liberal Arts?

In this episode of Light & Truth, University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford, PhD, answers a basic (and often misunderstood) question: What are the liberal arts? Picking up from Episode 1’s conversation about AI’s promise and peril, President Sanford begins to explain why a true liberal arts education helps us become masters of technology—rather than mastered by it.

There's commonly some confusion around terms like “classical education” and “liberal education.” The liberal arts aren’t limited to ancient history, and they aren’t about political liberalism. At their core, the liberal arts are about liberation—freedom from ignorance and disordered passions, and freedom to live with real self-mastery and purpose.

President Sanford also reframes what “arts” means: the cultivated skills of mastery—like the art of being a physician, attorney, or statesman.

In the next episode, he'll turn to one of history’s greatest practitioners of the liberal arts: Aristotle.

Dare Students Go Amish on the Topic of AI?

Written for Word on Fire by Chad Engelland, PhD, professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas and author of Phenomenology (MIT 2020) and Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (MIT 2014)

AI: From Agnostic to Anti-Gnosticism

Written for The Pillar by Daniel Lipinski, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Pope Leo XIII Fellow on Social Thought, University of Dallas

Here's How we can Live with Artificial Intelligence without Losing Our Humanity

Written for Fox News by Jonathan J. Sanford, PhD, President and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas

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Light & Truth: Reflections on Education and Culture Today

Light & Truth is a newsletter by President Jonathan J. Sanford of the University of Dallas that reflects on the purpose of education in today’s culture. Rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition, it explores the enduring value of a liberal arts education and classical education as pathways to human flourishing. Through reflections shaped by Christian humanism and virtue ethics, President Sanford addresses contemporary questions with clarity and hope, emphasizing the role of civil discourse, freedom of speech, and the formation of free and thoughtful persons in the pursuit of truth.

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Reflections on Education and Culture Today