The Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University will welcome renowned journalist and author Douglas Murray to its classrooms this semester as the university’s inaugural President’s Professor of Practice. The appointment recognizes leaders who have shaped public discourse and invites them to contribute that perspective to university life.
Professor Murray will offer several guest lectures in “The Values of Verse: Sacred and Secular Perspectives.” Taught by Straus Center Resident Scholar Dr. Shaina Trapedo under the auspices of both the Straus Center and the English Department at Yeshiva College, the course explores fundamental questions that have animated poets and thinkers across millennia: What makes a good poem? What good are poems? From Aristotle's assertion that poetry plays a crucial role in civic stability to Horace's dual mandate that poets "delight and profit" their audiences, the course traces how great verse serves both aesthetic and moral purposes. For Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, who taught English literature at Stern College for Women after completing his Ph.D. in English at Harvard in the late 1950s, “[q]uite apart from the precision, economy, suggestiveness, and force, great poetry may be imaginative and passionate—and, as such, inspiring, exhilarating, and ennobling.” In seeking to understand the value(s) of verse, students will study a variety of English poets (including a selection of early foreign-language influences) of the Anglophone tradition from the 16th century up to the 20th century.
Murray, whose books include On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and The War on the West, brings a distinctive perspective on the vital role of literary tradition in an age of cultural fragility. His "Things Worth Remembering" column has championed the importance of poetry and the well-furnished mind as essential bulwarks against civilizational amnesia.
Murray's guest lectures will engage students in close readings of the works of William Shakespeare, along with John Donne, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Emily Dickinson and more. These lectures will illuminate how poets across centuries have grappled with ultimate questions and why their words remain vital to understanding our own moment. Murray's insights on cultural memory and poetry's role in preserving civilization's essential truths promise to deepen students' understanding of why poetry matters not merely as an artistic pursuit but as a guardian of the values that sustain free societies.
Murray’s appointment follows his Mirvis Lecture presented by the Straus Center at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue last spring, where he engaged in conversation with Straus Center Director Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik and met with Straus Scholars in an intimate seminar setting following the public event.
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