Essays
1093 results
Page 56
Can football be civilized?
What football does to your brain (not to mention your alma mater)
The violence of football is bad enough. Less remarked upon is the role college football has played in infantilizing American higher education.
Essays
3 minute read
The "new' Colorado
Where have all the hippies gone? A journey to the new West
Spiritual descendants of cowboys and hippies now co-exist in Colorado, as I discovered on a recent visit. But the open spaces and mountain vistas, so breathtaking to outsiders, can sometimes drive permanent residents nuts.
Essays
8 minute read
Should Eichmann have been tried? (A response)
On prosecuting evil: Adolf Eichmann, meet Billy Budd
The problem posed by the 1961 Eichmann trial is what to do about evil, a category that eludes definition and evades justice. The Israelis tried and made a mess.
Essays
5 minute read
Tragic hubris: American Exceptionalism
Heretical thought: Can Americans learn from Germany?
Americans insist that we're unique and special. From Germany, where I live now, the view looks very different. Yes, even from the land of Hitler.
Essays
3 minute read
Four little words that could destroy the planet
Four little words that could kill us: ‘I'll take it, sir'
You're in a high-class restaurant, theater or hotel and you've got something in your hand you wish to dispose of. The waiter, usher or desk clerk insists on disposing of it for you. This ultimate gesture of professional service may unleash the virus that ultimately destroys humankind.
Essays
2 minute read
A Penn graduate's modest proposal
Dear Penn: You made me what I am today, so who owes whom?
I hold a master's degree in social work from Penn but no job in social work. I do, however, have a budding career as a standup comic (and a former stripper). So what can my alma mater do for me now?
Essays
4 minute read
Does grade-point average matter?
The college instructor's quandary: When students lobby for higher grades
All good academics, admissions officers and personnel managers agree on one thing: A student's grade-point average doesn't really matter in life. Except when it does.
Essays
4 minute read
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My favorite journalist: Nicholas Kristof
Can one journalist make a difference? Ask the young mothers of West Africa
The world is such an unmitigated mess that my heart surges every time I see Nicholas Kristof's byline in the New York Times. His latest crusade spotlights a West African clinic where adolescent mothers— physically damaged in childbirth and abandoned for their “shame”— find healing.
Essays
4 minute read
The Eichmann verdict revisited (a response)
Crime, punishment and Eichmann: Hannah Arendt's contribution
Was hanging the appropriate sentence for the architect of the Holocaust? Hannah Arendt argued persuasively that Adolf Eichmann deserved to die. But can justice can ever truly be achieved in cases of “radical evil”? That question remains on the table.
Essays
9 minute read
Zimmerman's jury: The ideal vs. the real (3rd comment)
A jury of whose peers? George Zimmerman's trial, and mine
In the mid-1980s I served on a jury for a murder trial in Philadelphia. It soon became apparent that none of us jurors were “peers” of the defendant or his victim— the legal ideal. The same applies to the six women jurors who recently acquitted George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. So what's the decisive factor in a jury's verdict?
Essays
10 minute read