Author Profile

Graham Hillard

Graham Hillard joined the Martin Center in the spring of 2022 after fifteen years at Trevecca Nazarene University, where he taught creative writing, literature, and composition. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Union University and an MFA in creative writing from New York University.

Hillard’s opinion pieces and articles have appeared widely, in such venues as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Memphis: The City Magazine, The Oxford American, and The Weekly Standard. He has written on many occasions for National Review and is a contributing writer for the Washington Examiner, where he writes about film and television. On two occasions, his work has been listed among the year’s “notables” in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American Essays anthology. He was a finalist for the 2012 Livingston Award for Young Journalists in the “local reporting” category and the recipient of a 2017 individual artist fellowship for poetry from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

In addition to his duties at the Martin Center, Hillard is the founding editor of the Cumberland River Review, a digital literary quarterly. His first book of poems, Wolf Intervals, was published in the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade Books) in 2022. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and children.

Articles by Graham Hillard


Assessing Trump’s Higher-Ed Orders

These are bad times to be a recalcitrant Trump-hating college administrator. In his first nine-and-a-half days in office, the 47th president has signed numerous executive orders with the potential to…


MLA’s Alternate Reality

Proposition: Human flourishing will not be advanced at the upcoming meeting of the Modern Language Association, which begins next Thursday in New Orleans. Evidence: The conference program includes among its…



How to Find an Authentic Christian College

Things should be what they are, in higher education as elsewhere. Colleges advertising a liberal-arts curriculum should immerse their students in literature, history, and philosophy. STEM giants such as Georgia…




What Did We Learn from the Pro-Hamas Protests?

Last fall, having drunk deeply of the Left’s cocktail of antisemitism, post-colonialism, and general nuisance-making, a small but virulent minority of American college students began “protesting” for “Palestine.” Inaugurated mere…


Yet Another Bad Admissions Idea

Leigh made a 34 on the ACT. Bill made a 23. Which of the two do you want attending your academically selective college? According to a traditional or merit-based admissions…


New Sanity on Standardized Tests

Dartmouth College announced last month that it is reinstating its mandatory-testing policy after four years of optional score submission for applicants. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, dean of admissions…


Against Voter-Friendly Campuses

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” Virgil’s Aeneid warns. To that I add: Beware of college administrators bearing plans to “enhance American democracy.” Too often, what appears to be a simple…