Interview In Dialogue: The future of diversity on campus in the wake of the affirmative action ruling November 02, 2023 With the first round of early decision deadlines happening this month, it’s a good time to reflect on the realm of higher education and its evolving dynamics, including the multifaceted nature of equitable and inclusive education. Read More
Essay How life evolved the power to choose October 27, 2023 In recent years, more threats to our notions of agency and free will have sprung up, from diverse areas of science. If we come prewired in ways that influence our decision-making, how free can we really be? Read More
Essay Lingering, longing at dawn October 23, 2023 In a mountain town whose name I’ve forgotten, about fifty miles from Marrakech, I remembered an old woman sitting alone in a field. She had lost her home. Read More
Interview A conversation with Kimberly Kay Hoang, author of the 2023 PROSE Awards R.R. Hawkins Award Winner Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets October 20, 2023 Kimberly Kay Hoang is an award-winning scholar, author, teacher, current Professor of Sociology and the College and the Director of Global Studies at the University of Chicago, and the author of two books: Spiderweb Capitalism and Dealing in Desire. Read More
Essay Beyond the ivory tower: Real world guidance on education, skills, and careers October 20, 2023 The story of how a particular set of ideas eventually turns into a book can sometimes be a tale all its own. The creation of my new book has been a matter of poking and prodding a set of assumptions about education and careers over time. Read More
Essay What makes it so difficult for colleges to control costs? October 14, 2023 The fate of cumulative increases in college costs is playing out as predicted. Everyone agrees that it can’t continue to go on like this—and not just students and families. Read More
Essay The cascading consequences of a Child Protective Services call October 13, 2023 CPS intervention has ballooned in recent decades, such that state and county CPS agencies now investigate the families of more than three million U.S. children each year. These investigations carry profound costs for the families subject to them, even in cases when the agency promptly closes out after investigating, as is typical. Read More
Interview Simon West on Prickly Moses October 13, 2023 An uncanny blend of the external and the intimate has been a hallmark of Simon West’s poetry for nearly twenty years. In this new collection, the Australian poet and Italianist delights in the transforming and endlessly varied powers of naming and speaking. Read More
Essay Aristotle and ecology October 12, 2023 Aristotle urges us to study animals closely for what they reveal about the larger world around us, including ourselves. Read More
Essay Bidenomics and the Hillbilly Highway October 12, 2023 No region in the country has witnessed a greater decline in its manufacturing employment rate during the twenty-first century than the southeast. Regional deindustrialization, as much if not more so than the politics of racial resentment, explains the current era of one-party Republican rule in the South. Read More
Essay Dog diplomacy October 03, 2023 The habit of judging a political figure by their dog may seem to be a distinctively medieval preoccupation. Yet it is by no means alien to modern political discourse. Read More
Interview Angus Deaton on Economics in America October 03, 2023 Deaton tells the story of the last 40 years of economics in America, not by writing about economics directly, but by telling stories about the adventures of economists—including himself —in research and in policy. Read More
Interview Myisha Cherry on Failures of Forgiveness September 28, 2023 Forgiveness is one way at repair. It is not the only way. Forgiveness can never reach repair by itself. It requires work from community members as well as victims and wrongdoers. Read More
Essay Renewing the civic bargain September 27, 2023 Democracy today is in trouble: we see free governments wobbling, political tribalism everywhere, and rising authoritarianism. America, once the showcase of democracy done right now seems a system gone wrong. Read More
Essay The joke’s on whom? September 19, 2023 Amidst the uproar that ensued after the incident at the Oscars ceremony last year, there were writers and reporters who pointed out that Chris Rock was exercising the age-old tradition of the “fool’s license.” If we actually go to the historical record on court and household fools, then we find an even more interesting, but also more complex, backdrop to the discussion on whether it is right or not to get angry at a comedian for making a joke. Read More