Douglas Henry, Ph.D.
Dean
Douglas Henry is Dean of the Honors College. He holds a BA in religion from Oklahoma Baptist University and an MA and PhD in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. Dean Henry has taught students in all four of the Honors College programs in courses covering everything from Homer's Iliad to twenty-first-century great books such as Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Cormac McCarthy's Road.
Co-editor of three books and author of over 35 refereed and invited articles, book chapters, and reviews, Dean Henry’s scholarly work addresses such varied writers as Plato, Boethius, John Bunyan, Iris Murdoch, Walker Percy, Cormac McCarthy, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI and diverse topics including allegory, divine hiddenness, doubt, ecumenism, freedom, hope, and love. His interest and understanding of American higher education, and especially church-related colleges and universities, is reflected in Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation (Eerdmans, 2003), Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community (Baker Academic, 2005), and The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education (Baylor University Press, 2007).
The former director of Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning (2001-08), he also served six years as the live-in master of Brooks Residential College at Baylor (2007-13) and co-director of a summer abroad program, Baylor in Turkey and Greece (2011-19), in which his students walked the dusty plains of Troy, sailed the wine-dark seas of the Aegean, stood atop the Areopagus, and marveled at Hagia Sophia. With Gretchen Van Dyke (University of Scranton), Dean Henry was a mentor for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program, a national initiative supporting Ph.D. students interested in teaching in church-related higher-education.
At present, he is working on three book projects: Plato’s Euthyphro and the Character of Piety; Three Rival Versions of Education; and an as-yet untitled academic mystery novel.
Married to Michele L. Henry, professor of choral music education and director of the music education division at Baylor, he is the father of a seventeen-year-old son, Zachary. Dean Henry enjoys cycling, running, college football and basketball, reading, and traveling. He is deeply engaged in the local community, showing the usefulness of philosophy for life by developing a small pocket neighborhood, The Cloister at Cameron Park, and as a lead investor behind Waco's new, community-based bookshop, Fabled Bookshop & Cafe.
Recent Essays and Interviews
- Who Is Your Alma Mater? Fare Forward: A Christian Review of Ideas, Issue 21 (August 1, 2022).
- Can Socrates be Saved? Law & Liberty, February 14, 2022.
- Paradiso, Canto 1, Video essay for 100 Days of Dante, February 11, 2022.
- Homo Viator and Wayfaring Hope in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal (Fall 2021).
- Inferno, Canto 27, Video essay for 100 Days of Dante, November 8, 2021.
- 100 Days of Dante, The Hugh Hewitt Show, radio interview given to Hugh Hewittt, September 24, 2021 (34-minute mark).
- 100 Days of Dante, Baylor Connections Conversation Series, interview given to Derek Smith, September 10, 2021.
- Pope Francis Challenged Catholics to Read Dante This Year. Let's Do it Together, America Magazine, September 10, 2021.
- 700 Years of Encouragement, BaseCamp Live podcast interview given to Davies Owens, August 17, 2021.
- Co-Celebrants of Being, Fare Forward: A Christian Review of Ideas, Issue 12 (Summer 2021).