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  • Dhananjay jagannathan

    teacher of philosophy; scholar; essayist 

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    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

    email

    See Also

    my academic website, with information about publications

    Representation

    I am represented by the Rebecca Carter Literary Agency.

© 2025

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