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Why President Obama Must Replace Arne Duncan If He Hopes to Win Re-Election

by Mark Naison

Barack Obama's 2008 campaign inspired a spirit of sacrifice and idealism that I had not seen among close friends since the early days of the Civil Right Movement.  My upstairs neighbors, both in their mid-seventies, camped out in Virginia a week before the election to help get out the vote in that state.  My best friend and his wife did the same in Florida.  At least ten people in my circle took regular trips to Pennsylvania and Ohio on weekends to help move those “swing states” into the Democratic camp.

When It Comes to Community History, Charter Schools Are Missing in Action

by Mark Naison

For the last ten years, I have had the privilege of leading one of the most exciting community history projects in the nation, the Bronx African American History Project.  It is a collaboration between faculty in Fordham Department of African and African American Studies and community-based scholars, has, in that short time, conducted more than three hundred oral history interviews.  They have told the story of vibrant black neighborhoods in the Bronx never previously written about,

Hating Boomers: America’s Last Acceptable Prejudice

by Leonard Steinhorn

So now we can finally point the finger at those truly responsible for the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. No, it’s not the priests who actually exploited the young children entrusted to them. Nor is it the bishops themselves, many of whom looked the other way and willfully ignored the signs of dysfunction in their church.

Memorial Day in Mountain View Cemetery

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

We are met in the beautiful open air of Ashland, Oregon on Memorial Day, 2011.  We are gathered for a variety of reasons, but it is safe to say that every person here feels a sense of obligation.It is our duty, every one of us, to remember all who braved danger while wearing the uniform of the armed forces of our Nation.  Especially, we honor those who gave their lives when serving our Country, the missing, and all who were wounded.

The Money Trail in Education Reform Leads to Everyone But Those Who Need It The Most

by Mark Naison

In the last ten years, tens of billions of dollars have been spent to reform America’s schools—some of it coming from the federal Department of Education, some of it from state legislatures, some of it from private foundations.  This money has gone to fund research on Common Core Standards, to close failing schools and open up new ones, to create new protocols for assessing schools and teachers, to create new batteries of tests to evaluate students learning, to bring management consultants into school systems and in some cases into individual schools and to fund charter schools and edu

Adding the Pressure of High-Stakes Testing to the Pressures of Poverty

by Mark Naison

Hearing that the governor of New York plans to raise student test scores from twenty percent to forty percent of teacher ratings just reinforces my perception that a species of insanity has overtaken those in charge of public education in the United States.

The Path to a Steady-State Economy

by Eric Zencey

All of economics is divided into two schools:  steady-state theory and infinite planet theory.  They can’t both be right.  You’d think the choice between them would be obvious, but infinite planet theory still holds sway in classrooms and in the halls of power where policy is made.  Last month, though, brought a significant development:  the manager of a major hedge fund registered a carefully reasoned dissent from infinite planet theory.  And in doing so, Jeremy Grantham offered a glimpse of how and why steady-state economic theory will ultimately come to

Original Intent and the Debt Ceiling

by Robert E. Wright

If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. Treasury may have to default on its bonds or its other obligations.  Allowing a default to occur would be both unwise and unconstitutional.

"Not American Enough?" This Political Slur Has a Long History

by Rosemarie Ostler

The obsession with President Obama's birth certificate, still not completely laid to rest, is an extreme version of a tactic that has marked American politics since the days of the Founding Fathers:  questioning whether a political opponent is a "real" American.  It was first employed more than two hundred years ago when Thomas Jefferson ran against President John Adams in 1800.

David's Test

David's Test 

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 “The world is safer,” Mr. Obama said as he appeared at a White House ceremony bestowing the Medal of Honor to two soldiers killed in the Korean War. “It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden.”

Some Thoughts on Ivy League Admissions—and Affirmative Action—for Donald Trump

by Mark Naison

Donald Trump’s recent comments that Barack Obama didn’t have the grades to get into Ivy League schools shows a profound ignorance of the admissions policies of those institutions.  According to Bowen, Shapiro et al. who thoroughly researched the admissions policies of elite universities in the U.S.

Henry Ford for President!

by Joseph Kip Kosek

The nation’s leading capitalist emerges as a surprise candidate for president.  His political views range from unknown to repulsive to incoherent, but he vaults to the top of early opinion polls.  He has that flair, that self-reliance, that je ne sais pas that set him apart in an undistinguished field.  The man, of course, is Henry Ford.  Long before Donald Trump burst into contention for the Republican nomination, Ford briefly became the most exciting prospect for the presidential election of 1924.

A Modest Proposal to Rescind Child Labor Laws

by Janet Golden

The Devil is in the "Debt"

by Ira Chernus

It’s a trite cliché to say that on Election Day the economy trumps everything else. In 1932, for example, the incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover never had a chance. Yet when the Democrats gathered for their national convention that year -- with the nation at the deepest point of its worst depression ever; with unemployment running at least 25%; with Hoover an easy target to blame for economic woes -- what issue dominated the convention? Not “the economy, stupid.” No, it was the fight over the prohibition of alcohol.

The Civil War: Losing the War, Winning the History

by Steven Conn

One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow, April 12, 1861, Edmund Ruffin proudly fired a shot at Fort Sumter, the federal military installation in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor.  Almost ceremonially it began the Civil War.  Four years and more than 600,000 dead Americans later, Ruffin fired what has been called the last shot of the war when he killed himself, so distressed was he that his beloved Confederacy had lost. History is written by the w

Teaching is Relationship Building—Something School Reformers Often Forget

by Mark Naison

One of the most damaging examples of the tunnel vision of so-called school reformers is the “school turnaround” concept incorporated  in the Obama Administration's “Race To the Top” legislation and currently being implemented in school districts throughout the nation.  “Turnaround” strategy  proposes  that a school designated as “failing”—invariably on test scores—be closed and either replaced with a charter school or reopened as a new school with a different principal and no more

Human Spaceflight Began Fifty Years Ago This Month, But Not Much Has Happened Lately

by Jonathan Coopersmith

Half a century ago on April 12, 1961, Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first person to reach outer space and orbit the Earth.  Eight years later the Space Race ended in an American victory when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon.   Since then, it's been all down hill for human space flight.   Racing to the moon in the 1960s was possible for two reasons:  First, major military investments—more than $12 billion by 1957 ($90 billion in today's do

Closing America’s Playground: Los Angeles and the History of Our Parks and Recreation Crisis

by Lawrence Culver

On a Tuesday morning in late December 2010, for the first time ever, the gates closed at Disneyland.   The reason was simple enough—holiday crowds had overw

Detroit Isn't Dead—But Tell That to the Media

by Kevin Boyle

Last week the United States Census Bureau announced that in the past ten years Detroit’s population had fallen by a staggering 25 percent.  The news swept through the national media, their stories almost always accompanied by suitably grim photographs:  in the New York Times a shot of two derelict houses standing on an otherwise empty block; in the Wall Street Journal the shell of a long-abandoned Packard plant; and on Time’s website an entire gallery of boar