Lit Mag Editors Should Do This, Too

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“… Professor Sandel says a “philosophically frank” university should tell those it rejects that “we don’t regard you as less deserving than those who were admitted” and that “it is not your fault that when you came along society happened not to need the qualities you had to offer.”

In a similar vein, those accepted should be told: “You are to be congratulated, not in the sense that you deserve credit for having the qualities that led to your admission – you do not – but only in the sense that the winner of a lottery is to be congratulated. You are lucky to have come along with the right traits at the right moment.””

— From an article in Times Higher Education on Michael Sandel’s new book Justice — What’s the Right Thing to Do. (via)

Seth Fischer’s writing has twice been listed as notable in The Best American Essays and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize by several publications, including Guernica. He was the founding Sunday editor at The Rumpus and is the current nonfiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown. He is a Dornsife PhD Fellow at USC and been awarded fellowships and residencies by Ucross, Lambda Literary, Jentel, Ragdale, and elsewhere, and he teaches at the UCLA-Extension Writer’s Program and Antioch University, where he received his MFA. More from this author →