And the Prime Minister sucks ice cream in the company of a happy band of children, while a naked man, sores on his neck, lies for days in Washington Boulevard gnawing chicken bones. . . . And there’s a kung fu movie in every town. . . . And there’s dancing in paradise.-Bruce Cockburn, “Dancing…

In a well-known essay on the study of international relations, political scientist Robert Cox made a useful distinction between what he calls “problem-solving theory” and “critical theory.” Cox’s distinction articulates something pretty commonsensical, which is why I assign excerpts from his essay in lots of different classes that have nothing to do with international relations.…

Once upon a time, Paul Hunham,Played, in a command performance, by Paul Giamatti. the lead character of Alexander Payne’s recent film The Holdovers,The Holdovers is now available for streaming on Peacock. thought he could make a difference. That’s why he went into teaching in the first place. He felt a calling to prepare students for…

We were doing an interview on an NPR station, a kind of “point-counterpoint” thing. The other interviewee was a self-identified agnostic, and the topic was the rights of academic institutions to “discriminate” on the basis of religious beliefs. My dialogue partner was not overtly hostile to religion as such. Indeed he said some nice things…

I can remember the first time Sabbath became real to me. Sure, I had learned about it in Sunday School as a child or even heard professors emphasize its importance in my transition to graduate school. But certainly, I didn’t really need it. I was able to get things done and maintain both a positive…

“This one is broken!” Normally hearing these words from my toddler would make me assume something valuable, specifically something of mine, has been thrown somewhere, but this time I could understand the frustration. Watching my daughter struggle with a small shape sorting toy was to observe the resiliency of the human spirit, or perhaps just…

This post will not be about me, but I think I owe my readers some context involving a bit of autobiography to make sense of what follows. I am a theologian who teaches in the math and computer science department of a Christian, liberal arts university (utilizing an MS in Computer Science). This unusual relationship…

I am an Art Historian. And one way of making a “history” of art is to trace a history of gesture. The Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett Newman summed this up in his 1947 manifesto, The First Man Was an Artist.This essay was first published in the art magazine Tiger’s Eye (1947, issue 1) and can…

I recently conducted a study on athletic coaches at small liberal arts colleges and how they go about developing character in their programs. I was particularly struck by a statement from “Jennifer,” one of the participants in the study: I think the challenge with defining character is that every word you use to define it,…

When you go on sabbatical, there are two common questions that are asked before and throughout: “What are you working on?” and “Where are you travelling?” This fall semester, I’ve been fortunate to enjoy a semester-long sabbatical, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked both of these. My colleagues, my family,…