With its devotion to great books, Socratic dialogue, and affordable tuition* for all, St. John’s College is a rare holdout against troubling trends in American higher education. In 2022, Creative Santa Fe entered into a collaboration with the college to collect and showcase its contributions to “the great conversation” —  a 3,000-year exchange between writers, philosophers, poets, musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and scholars that continues to this day.

CrSF is proud to collaborate with St. John’s, which shares our values of diversity and inclusivity. International students comprise a significant ~20% of currently enrolled “Johnnies,” bringing a diversity of perspectives from the 25 countries they represent. In 2018, the college slashed its Ivy- level tuition by $17,000, making it now one of the most affordable private liberal arts colleges in the US.

As more and more students from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds gain access to the school’s unique curriculum and culture, we’re confident they will bring valuable voices to the great conversation.

In order to raise the visibility and accessibility of books authored by St. John’s alumni and faculty, CrSF has designed and built an online platform, “Books by Johnnies,” which we have turned over to college administrators for ongoing curation. The finished platform exists as a micro-site nested within the main college website, and contains an embedded submission form accessible to all St. John’s alumni and faculty. Viewers experience the platform as a living, virtual library, where they can encounter books like Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad (Eva Brann, professor & National Humanities Scholar), Do You Know Who You Are? Reading the Buddha’s Discourses (Krishnan Venkatesh, faculty), The End: A Novel (Salvatore Scibona, alum & National Book Award nominee), among many more.