Dr. Grant Havers’ new book, The Medium Is Still the Message: Marshall McLuhan for Our Time, is more than an academic release. It represents a major accomplishment for TWU and a meaningful contribution to the global study of media. Cornell University Press is one of the most respected academic publishers in North America and accepts only a small fraction of manuscripts each year. For Havers to be invited to develop a book for the press, based on an essay he wrote for the long-standing print magazine Chronicles, is a notable recognition of his scholarly impact.
Havers was also drawn to McLuhan because he represents a uniquely Canadian tradition of media scholarship. McLuhan was born in Edmonton and raised in Winnipeg. He is part of an intellectual lineage that includes Harold Innis and George Grant. “Canadian philosophy has provided an important contribution to the understanding of media,” Havers explains. “McLuhan encouraged scholars to think beyond narrow specialization long before interdisciplinarity was popular.”
This mirrors Havers’ own scholarly path. Although he teaches philosophy at TWU, he holds an interdisciplinary PhD in social and political thought from York University, bridging fields that align naturally with McLuhan’s interests. The book also arrives at a moment when people are searching for language to understand how technology is shaping their lives. Havers’ work offers a grounded, thoughtful guide for interpreting the digital world, rooted in the Christian liberal arts tradition that defines TWU.
A 30-year journey into the mind of Marshall McLuhan
Havers’ connection to McLuhan began in the mid-1990s as the internet was emerging. “I have been reading McLuhan for about 30 years,” he says. “He was not just a scholar. He was a prophet.” McLuhan anticipated online culture decades before it existed and foresaw many of the challenges that now define digital life.
For readers encountering McLuhan for the first time, Havers explains that he was Canada’s most influential media thinker during the 1960s, famous for coining the phrase “the medium is the message.” The phrase reflects McLuhan’s belief that the form of a medium changes the meaning of its content. He argued that the way a message is communicated is more important than the message itself and shapes how people interpret information. To illustrate this, Havers points to the 1960 Kennedy–Nixon debates. Radio listeners believed Nixon won, given his in-depth answers to questions. Television viewers believed Kennedy won, given his charming image. “The content was the same. The medium made all the difference,” says Havers.
McLuhan’s faith & conservatism
One of Havers’ central arguments is that readers cannot understand McLuhan without recognizing the influence of his faith. McLuhan converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s during his studies at Cambridge University. “Unless one understands his theological commitments, particularly his analysis of technological idolatry, it is hard to understand his study of media,” Havers says.
The book also explores McLuhan’s conservatism. He was not defending new media. Instead, he argued that print culture and the habits of literacy were worth preserving. “Without literacy, civilization suffers,” Havers notes. “If people cannot read or write well, they cannot make sense of the changes of their time.”
The making of the book
The project began with an article Havers wrote for Chronicles magazine in late 2022. “It was not a very scholarly article, but it explained what McLuhan was all about,” he explains. An editor from Cornell University Press read the piece and encouraged him to expand it into a book, which he completed in two years. “The rest is history,” Havers says. The Medium Is Still the Message: Marshall McLuhan for Our Time was published in September 2025.
Why this book matters now
In a noisy and rapidly changing digital world, The Medium Is Still the Message invites readers to slow down, think deeply, and interpret technology with wisdom and discernment.
Havers’ book arrives at a time when the public is wrestling with artificial intelligence, media overload, and cultural fragmentation. His work offers a roadmap for understanding these forces with clarity and depth. It also shows that scholarship rooted in the Christian liberal arts can speak powerfully to modern questions, guide readers through cultural change, and offer hopeful insight in an age of uncertainty.
About Trinity Western University
Founded in 1962, Trinity Western University is a global Christian liberal arts university dedicated to equipping students for life. Uniting faith and reason through Christian teaching and scholarship, TWU is a research institution offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in the humanities and sciences as well as in several professional schools. It has campuses in Canada in Langley, Richmond, and Ottawa. Learn more at www.twu.ca or follow us on Instagram @trinitywestern, Twitter @TrinityWestern, on Facebook and LinkedIn. For media inquiries, please contact: media@twu.ca.