Mark Bauerlein


Mark Weightman Bauerlein is professor emeritus of English at Emory University and a senior editor of First Things. He is also a visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college in Savannah and as a trustee of New College of Florida.

Early life and education

Bauerlein earned his doctorate in English from UCLA in 1988, having completed a thesis on poet Walt Whitman under the supervision of Joseph N. Riddel.

Career

Bauerlein is a Professor Emeritus of English who taught at Emory University from 1989 to 2018, with a brief break between 2003 and 2005 to work at the National Endowment for the Arts, serving as the director of the Office of Research and Analysis. While there, Bauerlein contributed to an NEA study, "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America". In 2023, he was appointed by Ron DeSantis to the board of trustees of New College of Florida during a controversial purge at the college of the state university system.
Bauerlein strongly opposes implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion in colleges.

Published works

Bauerlein's books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy and The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief. He is also the author of the 2008 book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future , which won the Nautilus Award.
Apart from his scholarly work, he publishes in popular publications such as The Federalist, ''Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and The Times Literary Supplement.
In 2022, Bauerlein published a sequel to The Dumbest Generation titled The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth To Dangerous Adults''.

Personal life

In 2012, Bauerlein announced his conversion to Catholicism. He has described himself as an "educational conservative,” while he socially and politically identifies as being "pretty... libertarian", according to an interview conducted by Reason magazine. He endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

List of works

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