The Poetry of Progress

Welcome to The Poetry of Progress, a blog I’ve been wanting to create for some time.

At its heart, this will be a space to explore how institutions of higher education can use evidence, reflection, and imagination to better adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances they face today. Colleges are not just service providers or credentialing factories — they are cultural institutions, spaces where society negotiates its future. Understanding how they evolve, and how they should evolve, requires more than data; it calls for creativity, historical memory, and a sense of wonder about the purpose of learning itself.

That’s why The Poetry of Progress will also wander beyond the boundaries of education policy and institutional change. Along the way, I’ll draw from the other spaces that inspire me: literature, philosophy, the arts, and the deeper search for meaning in the work we do and the lives we build. My hope is that this becomes a place where serious professionals and serious humans — those who want to think not just about strategies and metrics, but about values, beauty, and purpose — can meet, share ideas, and help each other make sense of progress in all its forms.

In that spirit, the spark for this blog came from a conversation I found myself in during a meeting at UC Berkely. Over coffee with a small group of mostly students and some faculty, we drifted into a discussion about what makes something endure — a work of art, a cultural institution, even a career. Someone asked, “Is relevance something you preserve, or something you constantly remake?” A student made refence to a recent article in the Stanford Daily. Eyes opened wide and gasps were in the air.

Later that evening I hunted down the article – a passionately written piece that made a compelling case that the real value of classical literature is best preserved through constant reinterpretation and reinvention dedicated to making it “relevant” to contemporary audiences. The article used Shakespeare to ground the argument. I posted a response in the hope it will invite further discussion, if not thoughtful reflection (although anticipating much silence).

Here’s the link: https://stanforddaily.com/2025/02/24/death-of-the-masterpiece-bury-your-shakespeare/#google_vignette

My Response:

Thank you for publishing this thought-provoking review, which raises important questions about how we approach Shakespeare in the modern age. While I appreciate the author’s enthusiasm for creative adaptations, I would like to offer a respectful counterpoint: that preserving Shakespeare’s original language and meaning is equally — if not more — vital than any effort to reinvent his work for contemporary audiences.

The author suggests that Shakespeare’s true spirit is found not in scholarly reverence, but in creative reinterpretation, arguing that the “weirder Shakespeare gets, the better.” Yet this perspective risks undervaluing what makes Shakespeare so enduring in the first place — his astonishing command of language, his nuanced understanding of human nature, and his ability to compress entire worlds of meaning into a single poetic line.

Adaptations may be entertaining, and some indeed bring fresh insight, but they cannot replace the singular experience of encountering Shakespeare’s words as he wrote them. In translation or modernization, much is inevitably lost — the intricate wordplay, the historical context, the subtle ambiguities that invite reflection rather than spoon-feed interpretation. What is gained in these reinventions — pop culture relevance, visual spectacle, or the fleeting appeal of topicality — may be of questionable long-term value when compared to what is sacrificed.

Moreover, the article leans heavily on the argument that Shakespeare’s own audiences were not literary purists, but rather rowdy, engaged participants in a theatrical event. While this is true, it does not follow that Shakespeare’s language is incidental or easily replaced. The very words his audiences heard — rich with invention, irony, and philosophical depth — are the reason his plays still resonate centuries later. To discard that language in favor of trendy adaptations risks treating Shakespeare not as an artist, but as a brand — a recognizable label applied to whatever cultural product we happen to want to sell today.

Of course, there is room for creative dialogue with the past. But dialogue requires preserving both voices: Shakespeare’s and our own. If we abandon the effort to understand Shakespeare on his own terms, we risk turning him into little more than raw material for our own projections — losing the possibility that his works might challenge us, teach us, or reveal something we would not have seen otherwise.

Rather than choosing between preservation and reinvention, I would urge us to value both — but to place primary importance on ensuring that future generations encounter the original works in all their complexity. After all, there is nothing stale about a conversation with one of the most brilliant minds in human history.