Thought of the Day

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November 25, 2025: Reflection on the Suspension of Ball State’s Ph.D. Program in English

Learning that Ball State University has suspended its Ph.D. program in English has been both shocking and saddening to me. I earned my doctorate at BSU in 1987, during a period when the program felt vibrant, intellectually rigorous, and full of possibility. It was a community where faculty and graduate students alike believed deeply in the value of literary study and in the capacity of language to shape human understanding.

The news feels like more than an administrative adjustment; it feels like the quiet closing of a chapter. Doctoral study at Ball State was not simply a credential — it was a space of discovery and discipline, a place where I learned to think more deeply, read more closely, and write with greater purpose. Many of us who passed through the program carry its influence into every classroom we taught in and every page we have written since.

I also recognize that this suspension is part of a broader trend affecting humanities programs nationwide. It does not reflect a failure of the program’s quality or mission but rather the pressures of shifting institutional priorities and metrics that often undervalue the humanities. Still, it is difficult to see a once-thriving program constrained by forces far removed from its scholarly heart.

Whatever the future holds, I remain grateful for the education I received and for the professors, especially Thomas Thornburg, Frances Rippy, and Tetsumaro Hayashi and fellow students, including Daniel Wright, Virginia Paddock, and Beverly Simpson, who shaped my intellectual life. The legacy of the program lives on in its graduates — in our research, our writing, and our ongoing belief that literary study remains essential to a thoughtful and humane society.

November 30, 2025: Quotation by Sri Yukteswar

Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. —Autobiography of a Yogi