Jon D. Schaff

Jon D. Schaff of Professor of Political Science at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He’s the author of Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy and co-author of Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature. 

One nerd to rule them all

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We can all profitably learn from Tolkien’s work lessons that are politically salient, even if they don’t tell us how to vote and even if it means we are nerds.

Follow me!

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We need to teach young people about our history and institutions. Put me down as in favor. But we also need to teach about character.

Not-so-fine people

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By refusing to condemn antisemitic student protests, Biden sounds eerily like the “there were fine people on both sides” statement by Donald Trump in response to White supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

Sellouts

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Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel is nothing short of cowardly politics.

Of missiles, dinosaurs, and disease

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We need elected officials who are able to take in competing suggestions, assess them, consider various goods, and use practical wisdom to come to a decision. This is yet another argument for a liberal education.

The wretched scum and villainy of higher education

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As I write, the pressing controversy in higher education is the uneasy status of three presidents of elite universities, Elizabeth Magill of Penn, Claudine Gay of Harvard, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT. They are in the hotseat due to the […]