The Politics of Identity: Insights from Francis Fukuyama
Ron Berger — In his slim but useful book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018), Francis Fukuyama offers [...]
Culture and Society
Surviving the Digital Maelstrom
Larry Lancit — I received an email this morning from my friend Karl, who had a question. He said, “Well, I’ve gotten this far, what do I do now?” The back-story [...]
California Dreamin’: Too Many Jobs, Not Enough Houses
Jeff Berger — Why do people choose to remain in California in spite of its problems? Some people do it because they don’t want to leave their friends and family. [...]
A Difficult Learning Curve: Starbucks in Context
Bob Bates — During the morning of April 12, 2018, in a Philadelphia Starbucks coffee shop, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested for trespassing while awaiting [...]
Do Tips Belong to the Employees Who Receive Them?
Charles Cottle — It appears, thanks to a Trump administration initiative, that the lives of many tipped employees in restaurants may soon get much worse. On December 5, [...]
The Dream Deferred: The Assault on DACA
Larry Lancit — When I was in High School in the mid 1960s, I was a tenor in the A Cappella Choir. One of the most inspiring pieces of music we did was a rendition of [...]
Collective Memories of Death Camps and Complicity in Nazi-Occupied Poland
Ron Berger — The Polish government recently passed a law making it illegal in Poland to accuse the nation of complicity in the crimes committed by Nazi Germany in [...]
Images of Oaxaca: A Photo Essay
Charles Cottle — I was recently invited to display several photographs of Oaxaca, Mexico at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater during the annual Latino Heritage [...]
The Not So Grand Jury: My Experience
Ellin Jimmerson — I recently served two weeks on Madison County, Alabama’s grand jury. For those who may not know, the grand jury is the legal agency which decides [...]
Canada and the American Dream
Ron Berger — During the 1950s to 1970s, social scientists were interested in the question of “national character,” that is, whether people in a nation could be [...]
Crime and Due Process: Two Scenes Connected in the Dylann Roof Case
Dave Gillespie — On June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof murdered nine African American parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South [...]
Inequality of Disclosure: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Tony Platt — In 2010, Rebecca Skloot was a little known science journalist on the faculty at the University of Memphis when her first book The Immortal Life of [...]
A Christian Border Patrol Agent’s Reflection on The Border Wall
Ellin Jimmerson — Now that Donald Trump has been elected president, immigration as a topic of Christian concern has re-surfaced—or, in some cases, simply surfaced. My [...]
Bring Back the Buckaroo: Or “Shane, Shane, Come Back!”
Charles Cottle — When I was young there were heroes. They were on TV, in the comic books, and at the movies. It was the 1950’s, the heyday of the cowboy western. [...]
Reflections on Fake News
Jeff Berger — Recently I read an article by Sharon Noguchi in my local newspaper, the San Jose Mercury, about teachers helping students to distinguish between fake news [...]
The Sheriff of the Park
Les Guliasi — Point Isabel is the largest off-leash dog park in the country. The two sections of the 53 acre park are divided by Hoffman channel and connected by a [...]
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Bob Bates — Sociologist Matthew Desmond’s widely acclaimed book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), a study of the city of Milwaukee, pounds [...]
My Day on Jury Duty for a Death Penalty Case
Jeff Berger — Last October I was called to jury duty. When the judge announced what the case was about, I felt a chill go down my spine. It was a well-known [...]
The Dylann Roof Trial: First-Hand Reflections and Assessment
Dave Gillespie — The verdict came in around mid-afternoon Thursday, December 15, just a couple of hours after the lawyers completed their closing statements and the [...]
