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well as to anticipate their readers’ needs. Assignments are usually more successful when they give writers a clear sense of audience. As teachers, you might provide opportunities (in different assignments) for your students to practice writing for different audiences. Writers often have difficulty coming up with topics or imagining ways to expand upon a topic (what in classical rhetoric is referred to as the invention phase of writing). Therefore, it is helpful to provide questions and

philosophy to consider and begin to develop what they, as philosophers, might have to contribute to discussions about global economic issues in general and the recent financial collapse in particular. We spent our days in the university’s beautiful Villa Academica, seated around a long wooden table in a stately conference room decorated in the traditional style, listening to papers on topics ranging from international economic inequality and development to intranational economic education and rhetoric

3. A liberating foundation in the liberal artsThe roots of the liberal arts (artes liberales) extend back into classical antiquity. Roman education, for example, progressed from basic literacy (the province of the litterator), to secondary school under the grammaticus, and finally to rhetorical education with the rhetor. Rhetoric allowed for a career in public office or the law courts. The achievements of Greco-Roman culture were eclipsed in the West for some centuries after the fall of Rome

. In Luther’s intellectual work lay the seeds of a new vision of free and responsible society. The intellectual structure of the Lutheran reform movement was laid in previous centuries by the twin influences of the medieval European universities and Renaissance humanism. The medieval universities provided the foundations of free academic inquiry through a curriculum shaped by the classical trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). These in turn

. Through national and international networks, Lutheran colleges and universities collaborate with Lutheran Community Services, Lutheran World Relief, and the Lutheran World Federation to help and support the neighbor in need. Thus, the joyful spirit and tenacity with which Lutherans engage the world is a unique dimension nurtured and proclaimed in word and action on Lutheran campuses. It is an integral part of the academy. Indeed, Luther’s words concerning freedom and service are not empty rhetoric at

hypocrisies if we want to pursue justice and bring about productive change. Locate and challenge the weaknesses, embrace the likelihood that things could be much better than they are, and call out loudly the difference between a rhetoric of inclusiveness and a reality of subtle to blatant exclusion. (Photo: John Froschauer/PLU) Beth Kraig's class working with students at Lincoln HS studying racism on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016. +Enlarge Photo I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with a number of the