Perspective
Parenting a whole different ballgame
The highlight of my Little League career was a two-hitter I threw against the Knights of Columbus, the class of our league in Sharon, Pennsylvania. My team was sponsored by […]
Perspective
Making memories
I saw an ad on television recently that encouraged the observer to start “making memories” with the device on offer, probably a phone of some kind. My iPhone has, under its […]
Perspective
The filibuster bolsters stability
The United States Senate is a unique institution. Other legislative bodies lack its peculiar rules, which require a supermajority vote to get most things done. In the Senate, a voting […]
Perspective
The resurrection of the body
Our students are back on campus, and it has been a breath of fresh air. We asked them to quarantine for the first two weeks of the semester, since they […]
Perspective
Vox populi: The voice of the people
Francis Galton was a Victorian scientist with an interest in social Darwinism. It may have been his views on breeding that moved him to attend the West of England Fat […]
Perspective
A still small voice
This week, I took the train from Washington to New York. It was spooky. Union Station in Washington, usually bustling at 6:30 in the morning, was deserted. A man in […]
Perspective
Sweeter than the honeycomb
I’m certainly not the first person to observe that the tone of our civic discourse has gotten increasingly angry. I have recently come to realize, though, that some people actually […]
Perspective
The human costs of solitary confinement
No one foresaw the coronavirus outbreak. And now that it is upon us, we have been slow to realize how much it will affect the way we see the world. […]
Perspective
Coronavirus and ‘The Hollywood Squares’
The novel coronavirus that began in Wuhan, China, late last year has affected higher education like nothing I have experienced in my time as a university president. We have called […]
Perspective
Women and men: the odds
When we first began having grandchildren, they were roughly evenly divided between boys and girls. But the past 14 in a row have been girls. What are the odds? In […]
Perspective
Hold the Botox
I get my picture taken a lot. I’m not particularly photogenic, but as president of The Catholic University of America, people expect me to be in the frame for a […]
Perspective
Synchrony and culture
Last month I paid a visit to Bar-Ilan University in Israel for a discussion about the role of faith in higher education. Bar-Ilan is distinctive among Israeli universities in its […]