
Dhananjay jagannathan
teacher of philosophy; scholar; essayist
photo credit: Nathania ten Wolde
Selected Writing for a General Audience
- Upcoming
- an essay on sacred music and belief for Commonweal (September 2025)
- an essay on trust in news journalism for Preamble (Summer 2025)
- My book Culture as Conversation will be published by Penguin Press in 2026. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Cultured Opinion featuring essays on culture and identity.
- On Teaching
- "On angels, demons, and artificial intelligence" for Public Discourse
- "On the teacher" for The Line of Beauty
- "Teaching the One Percent" for Plough Quarterly
- "Tradition and Community" for VIRTUE Magazine
- "What is Our Scholarly Inheritance?" for Plough Quarterly
- On Food
- "on the public house" for The Line of Beauty;
- "on the dinner party" for The Line of Beauty
- On Political Community and the Common Good
- "On Privacy and Exclusion" for Comment
- "What Canada's Euthanasia Advocates Ask Us to Believe" for Bulwark+
- "What's the ius?" (A review of Adrian Vermeule's Common Good Constitutionalism) for Commonweal
- "Morality and the Aims of Politics" for Earth & Altar
- "Justice and the State: Against a Christian Caliphate" for Athwart
- On Citizenship
- "On love of country" for The Line of Beauty
- "Choosing America" for Plough Quarterly
- "Courage, Citizenship, and the Limits of Autonomy" for Breaking Ground [chosen for publication in a volume of essays on the pandemic edited by Susannah Black and Anne Snyder]
- "What to an Immigrant is the Third of November?" for Breaking Ground
- On Music
- "On busking" for The Line of Beauty
- "Music and Morals" for Plough Quarterly
- "The Politics of Polyphonic Singing" for Plough Quarterly
- On Faith
- "What is Reality?" for Earth & Altar"
- "Expectation and Narrative: Reflections on Advent" for Earth & Altar
- On academic freedom and the life of the university
- Columbia University's Self-Destruction (Blog of the American Philosophical Association, Aug. 5, 2025)
- Two Visions for the University (Columbia Spectator, Apr. 21, 2025)
- On the crisis of academic freedom at Columbia (Blog of the APA, Apr. 3, 2025)
- Appeasing Trump is not the Answer (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Apr. 2, 2025)
- on campus protest (The Line of Beauty, Mar. 27, 2025)
- Self-Governance is Hard Work (Columbia Spectator, Mar. 9, 2025)
- The next Columbia president should be a humanist (Columbia Spectator, Sep. 18, 2024)
- on the freedom to inquire (The Line of Beauty, Dec. 20, 2023)
Other Media
- My essay on angels, demons, and AI is the topic of an episode of the Wednesday Conversation podcast
- In Spring 2025, I was a resident speaker for Lectures on Tap. Find my latest lectures here.
- My essay on the dinner party covered by CNN
- Audio conversation on the novel with Tara Isabella Burton, Phil Christman, and Trevor Cribben Merrill (The Line of Beauty)
- Podcast on inheritance and legacy for PloughCast with Susannah Black and Peter Mommsen
- Podcast on Rooted Cosmopolitanism for PloughCast
- Panelist, Roundtable on Populism, The Helix Center
- Should Some Books Not Be Read? A Veritas Forum discussion with Tara Isabella Burton
- Interview on Augustine's Confessions for the Writ Large podcast with Zack Davis
- Lecture on the Anti-Moral Imagination of Michel Houellebecq for the Morningside Institute
- Interview on Sophocles and Greek Tragedy for the Sacred & Profane Love podcast with Jennifer Frey
Contact Info
See Also
my academic website, with information about publications
Representation
I am represented by the Rebecca Carter Literary Agency.
© 2025