I’ll see you on Sunday!
Archives for March 2025
Pivot Points: Chapter 14
Washington Disappointment
REVIEW: High Hawk
All of life is a mystery
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Not everyone at Howard University is happy Ibram X. Kendi is coming. Against “scholactivism” Ben Franklin and climate change Martha Nussbaum Udi Greenberg reviews The Solidarity Economy: Nonprofits and the […]
“Even a first-year law student knows that the federal government cannot dictate the viewpoint and curriculum of a private Christian school”
Here is David French at The New York Times: This might sound like a funny thing to say, but I’ve rarely read a more unconstitutional letter. On Monday, Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sent the […]
Movie clip of the day
A Christian Palestinian journalist worked on “Arab Sesame Street.” He has things to say about Trump’s cuts to USAID funding
Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and a graduate of Messiah University, the school where I teach American history. Some of you may remember his Current piece on the one year anniversary of the Gaza War. Here is a […]
“If you oppose all tariffs, you are essentially signaling that you are comfortable with exploited foreign workers making your stuff at the expense of American workers.”Â
Chris DeLuzio represents Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Here is a taste of his piece at The New York Times: Many of my constituents support smart tariffs, particularly ones that target China, and so […]
Trump’s “bronana republic”
Dennis Jett is a former American ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. He teaches international affairs at Penn State University. Here is a taste of his recent op-ed at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: …Perhaps the strongest case can be made, however, is […]
“I once believed university was a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated”
What should professors do about AI generated papers? When I returned to teaching from a sabbatical last year I noticed that the students in my general education history classes suddenly learned how to write. Were they using ChatGPT to write […]
Pivot Points: Chapter 13
Second Time Around
The Greatness of The Great Gatsby
Happy 100th!
The Trump administration is going after private faith-based colleges
David French is on the case:
A lot of Democrats and progressives still have no clue
If you listen to some progressives–including many Christians–Donald Trump won because white people are bigoted. Trump supporters are a bunch of Christian nationalists, patriarchs, and racists, they say. As a result, we must spend the next four years doubling down […]
Kenneth Woodward remembers Martin Marty
Woodward was the longtime religion editor at Newsweek. Much of his career on the religion beat overlapped with Martin Marty’s career as a scholar and interpreter of American religious life. Here is a taste of Woodward’s piece at Commonweal: In […]
David Brooks: “You can’t oppose Marjorie Taylor Greene and then think what Al Green did was totally fine.”
David Brooks on Trump’s speech to the nation on Tuesday night and the current plight of the Democratic Party: There were a lot of dramatic moments for people to think: Wow, that’s a good guy. The moment with that cute […]
Thinking about the impossible
Writer Jay Michaelson asks if Rice University religious studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal has gone mad, or normal?” Kripal’s recent book is How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else. Here is a taste of Michaelson’s review […]
Pivot Points: Chapter 12
Marvin Appleseed
REVIEW: Against Worldview?
Academic freedom + romantic individualism = one huge mistake
We heard from Trump last night. But what do Americans really think about the issues?
Digby’s Hullabaloo shares information from Pew Research Center: Economy: 24% of U.S. adults say the economy is in excellent or good shape, while far more say it’s doing only fair (45%) or poor (31%). Looking ahead, partisans have very different predictions about what […]