Since the beginning of human history, humans have bickered constantly over territory, resources, and power. Now, with the possibility of a right-wing Mormon space cadet taking up residence in the White House before the year is out, the Muslim world ready to riot at the upload of a shitty YouTube video, and the advent of…
Four years ago, America was on the verge of electing the country’s first African American president—a stunning marker, for many, of the promises of progress fulfilled. This year, Barack Obama faces a Mormon challenger, and religion, not race, fuels at least some of the suspense of this close presidential contest. But religion and race in…
How is the absence of discussion about global warming going to affect our ability to do something about it? Climate change and the federal government’s role in addressing it are conspicuously missing from the presidential campaign trail and the halls of Congress. A broad range of environmental groups and other experts have called on the…
Katrina Lantos Swett contributes a post for On Faith’s Guest Voices: Across the globe, religion and belief continue to matter deeply in the lives of people and their cultures. From worship to prayer, births to funerals, weddings to holy days, almsgiving to thanksgiving, religion is a central source of identity, meaning, and purpose for billions…
You can call them “unaffiliated,” as in a recent Pew poll, or “nones”—or even just “not very religious.” A brand new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute divides this group further (and somewhat counterintuitively) into “unattached,” “atheists/agnostics,” and “seculars.” But whatever you call them, this ever-growing cohort of unchurched Americans makes up, at 23%,…
The Pentagon ranks it as a national security threat and, left unchecked, climate change is expected to cost the US economy billions of dollars every year – and yet it has proved the great unmentionable of this election campaign. Amid unprecedented melting of the Arctic summer sea ice, new temperature records in the US and…
The 2012 presidential election will be won by the candidate who can convince voters that he has the vision to lift the nation out of the economic doldrums. The economy is the right topic, but the discussion neglects the true driver of the country’s prosperity: scientific and technological enterprise. Half of the U.S. economic growth…
The following is from a guest post to the Chronicle’s WorldWise blog, written by John D. Holm, the former director of the Office of International Education and Partnerships at the University of Botswana and director of international programs at Cleveland State University: International-development experts have expressed much concern about the brain drain of African scholars…
Jim Yong Kim, the new president of the World Bank, said that dealing with climate change will be one of his priorities. “Since becoming president of the World Bank, I have looked deeply into the data on climate change, and I have to say I was surprised that even in last 6 months to a…
He’s been called “America’s fiercest climate blogger.” And as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a former Clinton administration official on clean energy, and an MIT trained physicist, the subjects he covers are vast—ranging from energy policy to the role of rhetoric in communications. But there’s been a recurrent theme over the…