Chair and Professor of English Justin Jackson recorded a podcast episode with members of the Duck Dynasty family in Louisiana last month.
“Look, I’m an academic through and through with regards to what I read and how I write and all of that stuff, but in face-to-face relationships, I’m not an academic at all,” Jackson said. “I’m a Hillsdale Fair kind of guy and we leave it at that, and they are too. And so it was wonderful.”
Hillsdale College’s Online Courses program partnered with the “Unashamed with the Robertson Family” podcast. Every Friday, the podcast features “Unashamed Academy,” in which hosts Al Robertson, Zach Dasher, John Luke Robertson, and Christian Huff talk about the Hillsdale online lesson they watched that week. Currently, they are going through Jackson’s course, “The Genesis Story: Reading Biblical Narratives.”
Jackson started a Substack page to go deeper into his online courses. According to Jackson, the audience of “Unashamed Academy” is essentially his audience on his Substack page.
The trip started with a Honduran breakfast, where Jackson and members of the podcast talked about the Bible and religion.
Jackson said he keeps in touch with Al Robertson, one of the hosts of the podcast.
“What a good dude,” Jackson said of his time recording the podcast episode. “We’re sitting there, and Al just goes, ‘Justin, tell them about your Substack.’ OK, I was floored, but that’s how good and charitable they are. And then they posted my Substack address on the video.”
People who take online courses don’t always have the opportunity to discuss what they learned with other people, like Hillsdale students do, so “Unashamed Academy” is a way of satisfying this need, according to Hillsdale Executive Director of Brand Management Juan Dávalos.
“I think a lot of people that learn online miss that part of learning, which is one of the most fun parts of learning,” Dávalos said. “And, obviously, this doesn’t replace that, but I think it helps people to sort of be part of that after class discussion, that after class conversation when you start sharing ideas, that sometimes it’s like, a little off, and your friend’s like, ‘Well, no, that’s not quite right.’ And so I think that helps fulfill that part of the learning process.”
The Robertson family is known for “Duck Dynasty,” their reality TV show, and Duck Commander, their duck call business. The “Unashamed” podcast has hundreds of millions of downloads, while the “Unashamed Academy” series is on track to reach millions of its own, according to Dávalos.
“A lot of folks in the Unashamed network, the Duck Dynasty network, are interested in learning more about our country, and certainly learning more about their faith,” Hillsdale’s Vice President of Marketing Jon Hall said.
Jackson said he does not try to impose his Eastern Orthodox theology onto the course.
“Bring your tradition to this course, I just want to show them how narrative and poetry works,” Jackson said. “It’s pretty much what I do in my literature courses. I think the Bible just has a specific grammar to it, much like Homer does, much like Ovid does, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, you just learn patterns. And what are these authors doing? And then you go with it from there. And so that’s really what I tried to do.”
The fundamental principle of all of Scripture is exile and return, according to Jackson.
“If there’s one thing that could unite us, I would think it’s repentance, and I would say that is baked into biblical narrative in poetry,” Jackson said. “That’s all I try to bring out.”
Jackson said he teaches Genesis in a Great Books course not because Hillsdale is a Christian campus, but because Genesis is a great piece of literature.
“I value what the college has done for me in allowing me to do what I do in the classroom, which isn’t always part of a — one wouldn’t think — part of a Christian tradition, not a conservative tradition,” Jackson said. “Like what I do is goofy. It’s odd. It is. It just simply is. But I think it’s right, and it’s just simply trying to give people the tools that, when you enter into scripture, here are the things you can look for.”
