Luminare

Reflections on History, the Arts, and the Enduring Questions of Human Existence

Lighting the Way

A New Writing Venture on History, Culture, and Meaning

By Steven Mintz

What if higher education isn’t just underfunded or understaffed—but is losing its soul?
Not just its students, majors, or public standing, but its moral seriousness, cultural imagination, and sense of purpose?

Over the past decade, I’ve written more than 800 essays for Inside Higher Ed’s Higher Ed Gamma blog.

The journey began with MOOCs, then widened into questions about how we might make college more developmental, transformational, engaging, and equitable. Most recently, I’ve turned to deeper questions—those that often go unspoken—about the value of our scholarship, the obligations of intellectual life, and what higher education is ultimately for.

Now, I’m launching a new companion space on Substack:

Luminare: Reflections on History, the Arts, and the Enduring Questions of Human Existence.

It’s entirely free and open-access, and it will allow me to write more expansively, personally, and frequently, without the constraints of format or editorial framing.

The word luminare is old, poetic, and resonant. It means a source of light—not just physically, but spiritually and intellectually. In earlier usage, a luminare could be a celestial body, a guiding flame, or a wise figure who illuminates difficult truths and helps others see more clearly.

That’s what I hope this space will be: a kind of intellectual lantern—casting light into shadowed places. A forum for grappling with the questions that haunt us: Meaning. Love. Mortality. Justice. Beauty. The emotional and ethical dimensions of our lives. The cultural inheritance we carry. The price of modernity.

And always, the deeper question: what does it mean to live—and to teach—thoughtfully, purposefully, and humanely?

In a moment when so much of the discourse around higher ed has turned narrow, reactive, managerial, or hollowed-out, Luminare is my effort to return to first principles—and to model what a more expansive, generous, and humane conversation might look like.

I’ll still be writing for Inside Higher Ed and other venues—but Luminare will be where I dig deeper, speak more freely, and range more widely across the themes that animate my research, teaching, and life: from historical consciousness and the liberal arts to technology, culture, and the life course.

I hope you’ll subscribe, read along, and join the conversation.

Let’s keep the torch lit.