Via Rod, I see that Prof. Patrick Deneen is leaving Georgetown to begin teaching at Notre Dame. Congratulations to Prof. Deneen on the new position. His new institution and South Bend are gaining a great teacher and member of the community. This is one of his reasons for going to Notre Dame:

The second factor informing our decision is personal, centered on concerns about our family. My wife and I hail from small towns, and both view our upbringings in those places as a deeply constitutive part of our worldview. We have sorely missed a sense of community in the DC area, a place where most of our lives’ activities are fragmented, often connected only by long car rides in heavy traffic. It has been a source of great dissatisfaction that our home life is so divorced from my vocation as a teacher and scholar. While teaching at Princeton, we frequently hosted dinners and gatherings of students; it was in the midst of those kinds interactions and colloquy that I wanted to raise our children. But, the reality of the D.C. area is that it is only possible for us to maintain a home relatively far from campus. This sense of fragmentation informs much of our daily lives – we have a set of very different spheres that rarely interact and overlap – home, work, schools, church, and so on. In the waning years that remain in which our children will live under our roof, I would like to give them that experience. This experience is palpably a part of the daily rhythm at Notre Dame.

Good for them. I hope Prof. Deneen has great success in his new position.