Dr. Jeffrey Bilbro and Sarah Soltis discuss the Liberating Arts Project, which “gathers faculty from a variety of institutions to lead conversations regarding the enduring relevance of the liberal arts.” Dr. Bilbro is currently co-editing a volume of essays on this topic with the Liberating Arts Project.
This interview was featured in Cogitare’s Fall 2022 Print Edition and has been edited for length and clarity.
SS: Why are you interested in the liberal arts? Can you give a brief summary of your background with the liberal arts?
JB: I was homeschooled. The phrase “the liberal arts” wasn’t necessarily the buzzword in our house – my parents weren’t into classical conversations or big Dorothy Sayers people, but the ethos was certainly a liberal arts ethos. I think that kind of formation in an attitude to life that seeks to elicit wonder and awe… puts you on a trajectory to live in a different way. So education was not a utilitarian kind of project, but it was part of our household life.
SS: What is the Liberating Arts Project and its background? What are your desired effects?
JB: I went to a liberal arts college, George Fox University, which, when I was there, had a pretty robust core. That opened up for me this vision of Christian higher ed as an opportunity to induct students into the classical Christian tradition of liberal arts learning.
Clearly (as everyone knows), this is a moment of technological and cultural and religious and economic disruption of higher ed that is calling into question these institutions and their modes of education… A lot of us Christian college professors have been thinking about how these changes are going to affect our mission. And what of this liberal arts mission is a product of our particular culture and economic and technological milieu? And what has to be maintained?
When Covid hit and we were all on Zoom, a lot of us were involved with precarious institutions anyway. These questions that have been percolating became really existential. With some of my friends and some new friends in Christian higher ed, I was on calls in March, April, May. At first there was no agenda – we were just talking about how you do class discussions on Zoom, exchanging fears about institutional longevity and health. But as the summer set in and we had some more time, Jessica [Hooten Wilson] said something like: ten to fifteen of us having this conversation is great, but we need to open this up. She said that there were a lot of people outside who might be interested. So we applied and got a grant from the CCCU for some more formal conversations.
I think our basic question was: how does a liberal arts tradition respond to the twin utilitarian pressures of “I gotta get a job,” and “I gotta make an impact”? Talking to prospective students or their parents, we often hear concerns about the cost of higher education, and we hear that they want to make sure that they can get a good job if they’re going to pay this much money. These are fair and commendable concerns. A bunch of these prospective students, too, are really concerned about some kind of social impact, whatever form that takes. Maybe it’s social justice; maybe it’s, “I want to work in an industry that makes a difference.”
I’m deeply troubled by some of the ways that gets cashed out, but I think the impulse is legit. We think there should be a moral outcome for our learning. Insofar as it’s an expression of students’ desire not to be simply selfish, then that’s a good thing. But we’re really concerned with how both of those kinds of utilitarian ends threaten to distort the project of liberal arts formation…
It’s a time to build, but maybe we need to build differently. And hopefully this project helps folks think about building on the right foundation with the right orientation.
SS: For the average person, how can the liberal arts affect our attitudes towards life and our leisure?
JB: My friend Bill Cavanaugh likes to talk about the distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom for” through this metaphor: we all understand this distinction of “freedom for” in terms of skills like music. For instance, if there’s a piano in the room, and it’s not locked, and I’m not constrained, I am free to go open the keyboard cover and sit down and play. But unless I have disciplined myself through years of practice and training, I am not free to make beautiful music.
So, if we want to sort of exercise our freedom fruitfully and beautifully, it takes a lot of work and discipline and formation. I think we get that in music or sports – these discrete arenas – but we don’t necessarily translate that to the bigger question of leisure and of what it means to be a good person.
Maybe a lack of constraints is insufficient to exercise human freedom well. It’s one thing that I have free time and freedom to decide how to use my time. But if I use that freedom to watch TikTok videos or binge Netflix shows, is that really fulfilling the image of God that has been given to me? Is that really the best response to my call to participate in God’s unfolding of creation? I think the answer is no.
So, the liberal arts tradition, especially as it is adapted by Augustine and medieval Christian educators, is to form persons to exercise our freedom in the way that God intended. That takes a lot of discipline and a lot of formation and a lot of work because people are broken and sinful.
SS: It would seem that the way for an everyday college student to live this out would be to go to class, do the work, and love it as best as one can. But are there other instructions for living the liberal arts out in the everyday?
JB: I tell my freshmen in my writing course on the first day of class to define the liberal arts, and none of them know what they are… But at the end of the semester, I come back to these themes and I give them a set of five things. Things like: get to know your professors. Form intellectual friendships. Pursue activities in your leisure time that will bear long-term fruit rather than scratch your short-term itch.
One thing I try to do is to open doors from my class and discipline to other classes and disciplines. But I can’t really do that work because I’m not sitting in the student’s shoes. We can open doors for you, but you have to do the work yourselves – such as, thinking about how what I’m learning in biology relates to what I’m learning in philosophy.
This stuff won’t show up on your final exam or be something measurable, per se. But it’s kind of the point of being in a liberal arts college.
These connections, these ultimate ends for learning go certainly beyond grades and even beyond job training. Ask what is bizarre and curious and perplexing about the world and pursue that. Independent, self-motivated learning is crucial, and intellectual friendships that form among students and between students and faculty are crucial to the end, hopefully, that you develop these habits of learning and thinking that will equip you to use your leisure time now and your leisure time in the future.
I’m really encouraged when I see Grove City students go to lectures or be involved in student groups that are pursuing something of interest. I think that’s a sign that students are genuinely interested in pursuing these questions and grappling with them for themselves and not just going through the motions.
I mean, there’s always more than can be done, but I think that generally it’s a pretty healthy intellectual culture here. We should cherish that and promote it and not take that for granted. But also we should not allow that to go to waste.
There are a lot of cultural pressures against being involved in things that don’t have an immediate payoff for your resume or job. But these intellectual pursuits and friendships should be the fruit of an apprenticeship in the liberal arts.
