Category: Student 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.
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November 14, 2025
Thanks to James Robertson, an HMU doctoral student, for today’s post.
Heraclitus tells us that we cannot return to the same river twice. With respect to Heraclitus, while this statement expresses the truth that facts are temporary and experiences fleeting, it may conceal a crucial point, one upon which it relies. We may not return to the same river, but we can return to Heraclitus. His words can enter and re-enter our experience,
September 12, 2025
Thanks to George Narvaez, HMU alumnus, for today’s post.
My journey with education has never been simple. Living with disability often meant that the traditional classroom felt like a place where I did not quite belong. Instructions moved too quickly, expectations shifted without warning, and the conventional ways of measuring learning rarely fit my experience.
For years, I wrestled with frustration. Why did some people seem to grasp concepts instantly,
March 22, 2024
Thanks to HMU alumnus, Ellin Iselin, for today’s post.
These two powerful words in “I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land” by poet Rita Dove resonate as a major theme in the Community Weekend at Harrision Middleton University March, 1-3, 2024. Although I had participated in a Community Weekend and several HMU Humanities Advisory Council meetings virtually, Being There physically was well worth the cross-country flight.
March 15, 2024
Thanks to Bill Maniotis, current HMU student, for today’s blog.
I began my first course (HUM 701: The Great Conversation: The Cornerstone Course) at Harrison Middleton University in April of 2019, and I am about to finish up my coursework at HMU with my second comprehensive exam on the Great Idea of Love in April of 2024, before I move on to working on my Capstone project this summer.
» Read more about: Community Weekend, A Student’s Perspective »
September 8, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
If it’s been awhile since you have read Machiavelli’s The Prince, you might consider reading an excerpt with us this fall. We will examine two chapters of it in the October Quarterly Discussion. (Reach out to Alissa at as****@*mu.edu for more information). I was also thinking about how one might teach this work, how to bring it to life in the eyes of the students.
August 11, 2023
Thanks to James Robertson, HMU student, for today’s post
Learning with Harrison Middleton University offers a number of advantages over more familiar approaches, and prominent among them is freedom, freedom to study at one’s own pace, and in one’s own way. This can be a pleasure, but it is a responsibility. Working with a sense of these twin poles, of freedom and responsibility, has, in my case, evolved a personal method.
August 4, 2023
Thanks to Dave Seng, HMU alumnus, for today’s post.
In our last two posts we examined the nature of difficult questions—questions which cannot be reduced to utility or calculation and the rationality of humans contrasted with the functionality of AI. In this post I want to explore the question of wisdom. I will further develop why the hard irreducible questions might be a source of wisdom and then I want to explore how information is structured for human understanding which might lead to wisdom. Using this foundation,
July 28, 2023
Thanks to Dave Seng, HMU alumnus, for today’s post.
To read the previous post in this series, visit hmu.edu
In our last post we looked at the importance of questions and why self-reflection as individuals and a society is important. It seems part of the human situation to ask questions in order to better understand who we are and how to navigate the world. In our discussion series,
July 21, 2023
Thanks to HMU Alumnus, Dave Seng, for today’s blog post.
I recently participated in the fall discussion series, What the Greeks can Teach us About AI. The series focused on four Greek plays — Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus; and Herakles, The Bacchae, and Medea by Euripides. The discussions were insightful and explored many fascinating questions related to the human condition and societal concerns centering around technology and artificial intelligence (AI).
» Read more about: Can AI Help Us With Important Human Questions? »
February 17, 2023
Thanks to James Robertson, HMU student, for today’s blog.
In a poem, Whitman writes “This is no book; who touches this touches a man” (Leaves of Grass). In contrast, Plato has Socrates observe that “writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence” (Phaedrus).