Category: Fellow Post

We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.

Rebuilding Connections: Book Review of Together by Vivek H. Murthy, MD

May 1, 2026

Thanks to Chinyere Okoh, a 2026 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.

Beyond the Silence
by Chinyere Okoh

I find myself alone in a still room,
where shadows seem to stretch and exhale with me.
The quiet carries a single, fragile question that lingers in the air:
Where am I?

The voice feels both distant and familiar,
as though it belongs to me and yet echoes from somewhere beyond. » Read more about: Rebuilding Connections: Book Review of Together by Vivek H. Murthy, MD »

Finding Walden: A Personal Reflection on Thoreau’s Masterwork

April 17, 2026

Thanks to Natalie Sum Yue Chung, HMU 2026 Fellow in Ideas; PhD Candidate in Climate Policy, Princeton University

Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) by Henry David Thoreau: review by Natalie Sum Yue Chung

There are books we read, and then there are books that read us—that somehow knew us before we knew ourselves. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” (1854) has been such a companion throughout my life.

BOOK REVIEW: The Courage to Create by Rollo May

April 3, 2026

Thanks to Barbara Drobot, a 2026 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

As someone who works both in the classroom as a teacher and in the studio as an artist, I often return to a fundamental question: is creativity an exceptional gift reserved for a talented few, or a human capacity that can be cultivated? In The Courage to Create (1975), Rollo May approaches this question through an existential perspective and argues that creativity emerges from the courage to confront uncertainty.

From Kashmir—Hairpins and Earrings, Scarves and Sleeves

January 30, 2026

Thanks to Sabahat Ali Wani, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

Hairpins to earrings, scarves to sleeves—as a visual artist, I search for, collect, and use Kashmiri women’s clothes and accessories in my practice, primarily intending to shed light and document our lives, stories, and memories of resistance. That is at the core of my art: resistance, a medium to represent and record Kashmiri women’s narratives.

‘To Watch a Master at Work’: Learning from Teaching Groundhog Day

January 16, 2026

Thanks to Chad Greene, former Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.

“It’s like I said: I love this film. I’ve seen it over one hundred times.” – Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

Winter break was about to end. Spring semester was about to start.

In the third or the fourth week of the semester, it would be Groundhog Day. In the ninth week of the semester,

“If You Can’t Tell, Does it Matter?” Discerning Realness from Spectacle

January 9, 2026

Thanks to Joy Reeves, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

In the beginning of the television show Westworld, a man stares in blushing disbelief at Angela, the lifelike cyborg who greets him upon his arrival to the robot amusement park.

“Are you real?” he stutters out to her.

She looks at him and replies, “Well, if you can’t tell,

Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”: A Serial and Tide of Black Voices

December 12, 2025

Thanks to Ibrahim Nureni, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

In Margo Natalie Crawford’s Black Post-Blackness, tidalectics is characterized by “nonlinear” or “back-and-forth” black radical tradition of continuity in that the experiences of black people from the era of slavery to the contemporary days do not follow a parallel path but adopt a circular schema (3). English, in How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness,

Aspiring, Achieving, and Unraveling: The Branding of Liberation

November 21, 2025

Thanks to Rachel D. Perez, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

Barbie: The Movie sparked a wide range of conversations—from gender roles and identity to free will and power. But what struck me most wasn’t the obvious. It was the subtle, yet profound, commentary on the branding of liberation. That scene in the Mattel boardroom, where executives discuss how to “brand” freedom through Barbie—along with Gloria’s projections onto Barbie and Barbie’s own misconceptions of freedom—left me thinking about how we,

Tracing the Ebbs and Flows of Feminism and Art History Now

October 24, 2025

Thanks to Sabahat Ali Wani, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

In 1971, Linda Nochlin asked, “Why have there been no great women artists?” Triggering a series of conversations, debates, and gendered concerns around art history, this question still holds classical relevance, but also reveals Eurocentric ideals and practices of celebrated feminist art historical interventions, where non-Western women artists and their artworks are “doubly marginalised,” in fact,

The Success of a Nation: Rethinking the Ideal State

August 29, 2025

Thanks to Estella Achinko, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.

I have always been fascinated by the way nations rise and fall. Whether it’s the brutal rule of totalitarian regimes in Europe, the iron-fisted dictatorships of Africa, or the complex democracy of the United States, governance has remained a delicate, often unpredictable experiment. History does not provide a single blueprint for a successful state—only cautionary tales and fleeting moments of prosperity.

HOME

ABOUT HMU

HAPPENINGS

PUBLICATIONS

OF INTEREST

ABOUT

compliance

of interest

meet hmu

PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

ACADEMICS

APPLY

WHO WE ARE

CURRENT STUDENTS

POLICIES

RESOURCES

Degree programs

Continuing Education

ACCREDITATION /AFFILIATIONS

ACCREDITATION

AFFILIATIONS