Combining serious thought with great levity seems characteristic of the University of Dallas. The Core Curricula for both undergraduate and PhD students at UD are some of the most rigorous in the country, but students also celebrate what is surely the second-largest Groundhog Day celebration outside of Punxsutawney, PA. Such a rare combination of mirth and contemplation manifests itself in some of the most notable graduates of UD’s Institute of Philosophic Studies (IPS), where doctoral students study together in a one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary course sequence while also taking specialized courses in their own discipline, whether politics, philosophy or literature. Many IPS graduates are leaders in higher education or faculty members at some of our country’s top liberal arts institutions, not only writing fascinating books and producing well-researched articles, but also building new programs aimed at furthering the cause of liberal education and civic leadership in a country where both are a vital need. 

One such graduate is Matthew Mehan, BA ’00 MA ’10 PhD ’14, who is associate dean and assistant professor of government at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government. Mehan has combined active service, consulting for national leaders and heads of state, with contemplative and poetic writing in outlets both scholarly and popular. He is the author of two best-selling children’s books, The Handsome Little Cygnet and Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals (which we imagine would make great birthday presents!). Before his current position, Mehan taught for a number of years at The Heights School, where he also served as director of admissions. Mehan was the valedictorian of his undergraduate class at UD, earning a BA in politics, before returning for his MA in English and PhD in literature. He earned academic honors for his dissertation on Shakespeare, Thomas More and the education of leading citizens.

Below, Dr. Mehan discusses why he chose the University of Dallas not only for its unique undergraduate experience but also for its exceptional graduate program, which, as he remarks below, forms thoughtful intellectuals and teachers better than most to be found in these United States.

You’re one of the few graduates of the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas who’s a “lifer;” that is to say, who completed all his degrees — BA, MA, and PhD — at UD. Such a distinction puts you among good company, including illustrious faculty members of days gone by, such as John Alvis and Eileen Gregory. What led you to choose UD for graduate school after you completed your undergraduate studies? 

Yes, there are a few of us unicorns wandering the earth — “lifers,” “triple udders,” “wild-eyed believers,” “the well-educated” — we go by many names. Dr. John Alvis, God rest his lovely soul, was a role model for me on this path; he taught me Hawthorn, Melville, Shakespeare, Dante. He was even a reader on my dissertation panel. I came back to UD for graduate work because I wanted to study Thomas More, and Dr. Gerry Wegemer was the obvious choice of guide for that study. I also wanted to attend a graduate program that would look kindly on my wife and child. But in the end, I came back under a simple conviction: The University of Dallas is the finest continuation of the Catholic tradition of university education in the West. If you know that, certain conclusions follow. I knew IPS had a core curriculum and that this foundation would provide for a superlative higher education.

Your career has involved a number of leadership roles, at The Heights School and now in your current role as associate dean of Hillsdale College’s Steve and Amy Van Andel Graduate School on Capitol Hill. Are there particular ways your UD education, particularly in the Braniff Graduate School, prepared you for leadership?

I almost feel as though you are trying to tempt me into a liberal arts stemwinder about the incredible utility of the liberal arts for shaping the mind for prudent judgment and deliberation but also for putting human relations and the strengthening of those bonds at the absolute forefront of those deliberations. The combination of philosophy, theology, politics and poetry (the art of the human heart), which Braniff — again, I’ll use the word — provided us students, really does help us to think in a leaderly way. I’m always repeating the old saw (from Seneca) that the liberal arts can’t make us virtuous, just as food can’t make us athletic. But good luck winning a football game without feeding your quarterback.

Who were some of your favorite professors during your graduate school years?

I’m hesitant to answer, as I’ll end up leaving someone out. I can say that I was regularly moved by professors who taught well beyond the call of duty on a regular basis, even as they taught far beyond a sensible load of courses to make my fellow students and my experience at Braniff a truly formative one. John Alvis leaps first to mind in this way, and since all the rest of my professors still breathe the common air, I think they will be happy if I eulogize him alone. I will, however, add that the best paper I wrote in graduate school was a brutal and merciful rewrite for Dr. Greg Roper. He was very patient with my overly ambitious Chaucer paper of 55 pages that ranged from Plato’s Phaedo to St. Paul’s most subtle teachings (so I thought) in his second Letter to the Corinthians. Dr. Scott Crider taught the first class I had as a freshman at UD during undergrad, and it was a great joy to learn from him again in the Classical Rhetoric course in the IPS. And my dissertation director, Dr. Gerry Wegemer, would be annoyed if I praised him here, so I’ll just end with some Ciceronian preterition (thanks, Dr. Crider!).

What was the most influential class you took during your time in the IPS?

Shakespeare’s Histories with Dr. Gerry Wegemer (sorry, Ger!). In-fluence — the flowing in — of Shakespeare into my mind and heart resulted in a paper that became the seed for my dissertation, which concerned Shakespeare, Thomas More, Cicero and Seneca on the education of leaders. That class, that paper and that subsequent dissertation have set me on a course of curricula-building that was the basis of much of the course-building at The Heights School. It was the foundation for the Hillsdale School of Government curriculum that I helped to cofound. And it has been the germ of my work with the nationwide 1776 Curriculum and the reform of several states’ public education curricula. What flowed into me then has been flowing out to others quite a bit.

What advice would you give to IPS students as they prepare to teach during this difficult time in academia?

Play to the strength of our program. We are a cross-disciplinary program that does not cabin thought into a single specialized silo. As such, we make a specialty out of that rarest of sorts, the generalist. That you can bring Dante to bear on Augustine and vice-versa, that you can see the importance of mythos in Genesis and its appropriation in Leviathan, that you can hear the argument and agreement between King Lear and Aristotle’s Politics — these interrelations make you not only a thoughtful and insightful intellectual but also, in time and with practice, a better teacher than most any other sort.

What would you say is the unique value of the Braniff Graduate School and the IPS for today’s culture?

As hard as it is for this Crusader to accept, certain things defy articulation, and that’s saying a lot for a great lover of Cicero and Thomas More. I’d end with a jade’s trick and just say, “Ya had to be there.” Or to turn Hamlet on his head and imply by inversion the great strength of our beloved Braniff Graduate School’s transformative seminars and campus-wide discussions of great thinkers and writers and lasting truth: “The rest is silence.”

Alex Taylor is the Cowan Fellow for Criticism at the University of Dallas. Once he finishes his dissertation on Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor, he will also be a “lifer.” He has published academic articles in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture (2022), the James Dickey Review (2022), the Flannery O’Connor Review (2021), and English Studies (2019), as well as reviews of fiction, nonfiction and film as well as poetry (translations and original lyrics) in various magazines, including Dappled Things, Law & Liberty, The European Conservative and The American Conservative.