Advocacy and Constructive Criticism in Public Education
Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick — Last July, a local school board President expressed annoyance with me on social media because she felt that I only expressed criticisms of her [...]
Culture and Society
The Graying of Disability
Ron Berger — Most anyone who lives long enough can expect to have an experience with disability before they die. Moreover, as people live longer, on average, we are [...]
Technology and Jobs of the Future: The View from Karl Marx
Charles Cottle — Reputable sources report that advances in technology now take more jobs from American workers than China. In the past, our educational system has [...]
Someone is Wrong! (And Why You Don’t Need to Correct Them.)
Karen McKim — Judging by the conversations I read on social media, I’m not the only human who has an impulse, when I read a comment containing four true statements [...]
Can the Majority Rule in the Era of Trump?
Larry Lancit — In the United States we have spent the last two years enduring all manner of insult to our democracy. With the election of Donald Trump, an era of [...]
Celebrating the Viking Past
Jeff Berger — Two popular television series have recently appeared to reignite the public’s interest in the history of the Vikings. One is the History Channel’s [...]
Rural Chainsaw Repair
Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick — There are many things that divide city life and rural life: digital access and politics are often discussed in the media, but access to [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
