“My plan is either Thursday nights or Friday mornings, I’ll take the three hour drive back home, campaign Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then I’ll either come back Sunday night or early Monday morning,” Couzens said. “And, you know, repeat.”

“I think the opportunity for a truly enlightening liberal education begins to appear when students are made aware of this possibility that the ground on which they are walking is not as secure as they thought it was,” DiPasquale said. “To speak to those who have different opinions is—and should be regarded as—a gift.”

“I’m always interested in inner life, family, psychology, kind of how people move through the world in the daily ways in terms of their consciousness,” Graver said. “But I think I’m also increasingly interested in how these small figures intersect with the big history.”

“An uninhabited island invites you to fill the gaps because there’s nobody there anymore,” Kearney said. “So you kind of salvage their memory. You salvage their life for the future.”