One of my favorite podcasts is Dear Sugars, co-hosted by writers Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond. They are both frank, passionate, clever creatives who give meaningful, compassionate advice to people facing any number of life issues. I listen regularly. So I was surprised, a couple of weeks ago, to find that Steve Almond has a relatively …
You should buy and read the book, We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled, from political scientist Wendy Pearlman. To convince you, I’m going to share a half-dozen paragraphs that define the Syrian experience from 2011-2018, at least based on what I’ve read. Pearlman’s account is based on hundreds of interviews she’s done over five years …
I’ve written before about how I see no inherent contradiction in being a political scientist who also teaches yoga. The undercurrent of my political science interests has always been an effort to understand people who are not like me. I’m fascinated by how others see the world differently than I do, and how that leads …
This floated across my Facebook feed last month, and it generated two competing feelings in me that I want to suss out with you. I gave myself a little time before writing about this, because it felt so raw at the time. My first and most pronounced reaction — as intended (I must assume) by …
I’m currently at an academic conference, the sort of event I once adored and increasingly find to be somewhere in the neighborhood of insufferable. To understand why, I share this sentiment expressed by a researcher on a panel I just left, sporting an unattractive scowl: “Sad to say, I’m increasingly convinced that the American public …
Color me frustrated. And, then, color me mortified that I’m about to make a deep, dark, fraught issue all about me. For much of the last 18 months, I’ve felt tugged toward work with refugees. This tug began when I read my first book about Syria 18 months ago, and it has grown in strength …
At a political science conference last January, another professor and I started talking about civic education and civic engagement among our students. This is something I’ve read about a bit, but it’s not something I’ve honestly made all that much of an effort to incorporate into my classes before. I’d trace the lack of effort …
Across my Facebook feed came a meme (which I won’t repost here) suggesting that the only reason we haven’t outlawed Nazis and Nazi rhetoric in the United States is because we celebrate their beliefs. This line of thinking really unsettled me. Not because I celebrate Nazis or their ilk. Not because I support white supremacists …
John Nixon’s memoir, Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, begins with this explosive paragraph: The rise of Islamic extremism in Iraq, chiefly under the rubric of ISIS (or Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham), is a catastrophe that the United States needn’t have faced had it been willing to live with an aging and …
When Betsy DeVos was initially nominated to serve as Secretary of Education, I sent my Tennessee senators multiple postcards begging them not to confirm her. Lamar Alexander was one of her strongest supporters (in or out of Tennessee), and his letters in response to my pleas consistently emphasized how qualified she is, how much she …
