Building an Ecclesiological Response to Mass Incarceration / On Faith and Soul-Suffering

November 24, 2011

I recently got the chance to write about two of my remarkable classmates at Harvard Divinity School.  The article which resulted – originally published here - is reposted below. In 2010, HDS students Willie Francois and Helen Kim were named ministry fellows by the Fund for Theological Education (FTE), an honor bestowed on young leaders who [...]

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Marshall Ganz, Obama’s 2008 Organizer-in-Chief, on the Moral Urgency of Occupy Wall Street

November 5, 2011

In the early 1960′s, Marshall Ganz dropped out of Harvard to join the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. He then spent 16 years working with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers before returning to Harvard to finish his BA and earn a  Ph.D. in sociology. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he architected Barack Obama’s organizing effort. [...]

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Former DNC Chairman Ed Rendell on Intransigent Politicians, Compromise, and Occupy Wall Street

November 1, 2011

Ed Rendell has served as mayor of Philadelphia, (1992-99) chairman of the Democratic National Committee, (1999-2001) and governor of Pennsylvania (2003-2011). This interview took place on October 11 at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. MATT:  How does our political discourse today compare to when you first ran for office in the 70s? ED RENDELL:  I think [...]

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“From a Position of Moral Strength”: Harvard Professor and Gay Rights Activist Tim McCarthy on President Obama, the Republican Party, and Life as a Second-Class Citizen

October 26, 2011

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is core faculty and director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as a founding member of Barack Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council. McCarthy’s books include: The Radical Reader:  A Documentary History of the American Radical [...]

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“Desperation and Wild Inspired Hope”: Todd Gitlin on Why the Occupy Movement is Different From All Other Social Movements, How Initial Media Coverage Was Like a Pre-Programmed Computer Algorithm, and How Not to Judge the Movement’s Success

October 21, 2011

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph. D. program in Communications at Columbia University. In 1963-64, Gitlin served as the third president of Students for a Democratic Society. Later, he helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstrations against corporate aid [...]

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“We Are Moving in a More Humanitarian Direction”: An Interview with Philosopher Peter Singer (Full Text and Video)

September 30, 2011

Peter Singer is perhaps the world’s most influential philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. In late August, I sat down with him to discuss his most recent book, The Life You Can Save. Full text below. At the outset of your recent book, The Life You Can Save, you lay [...]

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The Banality of Evil, Revisited: An Interview with Paul Katz on Transitional Justice and Civil Society

September 20, 2011

Paul Katz is a student of social history at the Universidad Nacional de Luján in Buenos Aires, Argentina and a 2009 graduate of Harvard College.  Over the last several years, his research has focused on the role of civil society institutions under Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ dictatorships.  His article, “A New ‘Normal’: Political Complicity, Exclusionary Violence [...]

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“Goodbye to All That” – Mike Lofgren’s Reflections on His Time in the GOP

September 7, 2011

Mike Lofgren was a GOP House staffer for nearly 30 years.  This essay marks his departure from Congress and his take on the modern Republican Party.  It’s worth the read.

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Longer Lives for Some / Better Lives for All: Sonia Arrison’s Piece on Life-Extension Technology in the Wall Street Journal

August 28, 2011

Interesting review of life-extension technologies in the WSJ.  A few small quibbles, though.  The author, Sonia Arrison, writes: Arguments against life extension are often simply an appeal to the status quo. If humans were to live longer, we are told, the world, in some way, would not be right: It would no longer be noble, beautiful [...]

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Does Remembering Our Mortality Make Us Mean?

August 28, 2011

This from the New York Times: “In a study that began in 1989, a group of American social psychologists found that just briefly reminding people that they would die had a remarkable impact on their political and religious views. “In their first experiment, the researchers recruited court judges from Tucson. Half the judges were reminded [...]

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