About Us

Who we are

Houston Institute is an independent academic non-profit aimed to support the Rice University and Texas Medical Center communities. Its mission is to help students think deeply about the best way to live through the study of the liberal arts, especially philosophy and literature. Our main goal is to foster in students a habit of seeking and loving truth concerning life’s fundamental questions.

Such truth-seeking thrives in an environment where students have the freedom to ask anything, where reasoned debate and respectful disagreement is encouraged. Such inquiries occur best in a spirit of friendship and in conversation with enduring traditions of thought. Becoming such a truth-seeker will require living certain virtues such as courage, intellectual humility, and deep habits of study.

We accomplish our mission by sponsoring non-credit student-reading groups, public lectures, and providing one-on-one mentoring.

Though we are rooted in the natural law tradition–with Aristotle and Aquinas as central figures–and have a special interest in virtue and human flourishing, we look at the best thinkers with a range of views in a fair-minded way. All students committed to serious intellectual engagement are welcome, regardless of their views.

Why we work

Many dedicated faculty provide an invaluable service to students by introducing them to some of the very best of the liberal arts, by helping them to explore how such learning might relate to their own lives, and by nurturing in them the habits required to become better truth-seekers. HI aims to complement such work in at least three ways.

First, there is something deeply valuable about having a dedicated venue in which to explore life’s deepest questions that is not tied to the pressures that come from competing for grades, prestige, the promise of future employment and wealth, and the like. These things are important and have their place. But they can easily obscure that seeking and delighting in truth is good for its own sake and a key part of the human good.

Second, HI is building an intellectual community that seeks answers together: our goal is to be a space where students can form deep friendships around the quest for truth, even if there might be disagreement about important issues.

Finally, our programming seeks to show the relevance of classical accounts of human flourishing–such as those found in the Aristotelian tradition–to the contemporary, pluralist, secular university.

Houston Institute is part of a network of similar institutes at major universities across the United States and abroad. Generous support for Houston Institute is provided by the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education.

Why we work

More than ever, the university has made advances in specialized learning and research. Further, departments of humanities and related fields provide an invaluable service to students in helping them to address these questions. We aim to complement such work in at least three ways.

First, it is our view that even students who do not study the humanities at the university—for example, by declaring a major or by taking a course—can benefit tremendously from being provided a space to ask and attempt to answer such questions in the company of their peers. They also benefit greatly insofar as they can pursue such questions over an extended period of time, ideally, over their whole college career. The Institute aims to provide such a space.

Second, we aim to complement this work by building an intellectual community that seeks answers together. Even where disagreement persists at different points, it is our view that these questions are best pursued in common, not only in the company of traditions that have come before us, but in the company of peers and, ultimately, friends.

Finally, we seek to show the relevance of classical accounts of human flourishing to the contemporary, pluralist, secular university. Our aim is to enrich conversations in a way that is positive, cooperative and collegial.

Our Senior Fellows

Pablo Yepes Senior Fellow

Associate Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and at the T.W. Bonner Nuclear Lab at Rice University.
Ewa Thompson Senior Fellow

Research Professor of Slavic Studies and former Chairperson of the Department of German and Slavic Studies at Rice University.
Pawel Stankiewicz Senior Fellow

Professor, Molecular & Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine; Assistant Lab Director, Cytogenetics Laboratory.
Paul Fortunato Senior Fellow

Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston Downtown, where he teaches a wide variety of literature and composition courses.

Meet the rest of the team

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