Just a few.
A collection of snippets of early reviews of each of Marilynne Robinson's four novels--Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila. Funny; I had never noticed that each of them is a single word.
"The simple fact is that an entire generation of Americans is skeptical about the conduct of foreign policy, and they damn well should be. If they cannot remember a headline foreign policy that worked, they will not and should not have faith in foreign policy elites to do the right thing. And the situation is unlikely to improve over the next year or so." Thought-provoking piece by Daniel Drezner about why millennials and Gen Z folks are so skeptical of US foreign policy.
An interesting study of how Americans in general view the presence and prospects of religion in American society. Unsurprisingly the political partisan divide is stark. But it is also interesting to note that the Democratic party is a genuinely diverse group on this--composed as it is of increasingly secular white liberals and still overwhelmingly religious people of color--while the GOP manifests no significant diversity of views at all.
Good report with data about the economic effects of going to college, particularly about how public higher education creates opportunities:
access to higher education is a more significant driver of mobility than graduation rates alone. Yet many institutions are still not delivering on higher education’s promise of creating a pipeline to the American Dream.…
the research points to the importance of state university systems and community colleges for their role in creating a pipeline to the American Dream.…
The colleges with the highest mobility rates have annual instructional expenditures less than $6,500 per student on average, far lower than the $87,000 per student spent on instruction at elite private colleges.
Nowadays, however, there are some worries:
recent trends in access—a decline at colleges with the highest mobility rates and little change at elite private colleges despite their efforts to increase financial aid—call for a reevaluation of policies at the national, state, and college levels. It is worth considering changes in admissions criteria or expansions of transfers from the community college system.
Finally, Cass Sunstein on the importance of dogs for human beings--truly, for our species, a crucial development--and on the feature we and dogs share: docility, which he also names "grace":
Evolutionary anthropologists use the word “docility,” but a stronger term, suitable for both dogs and people, is grace. It is the opposite of savagery. It signals an ability to think charitably of others, which is crucial to an absence of reactive aggression. And in social interactions, grace generally breeds more of itself.
A nice piece that provokes reflection on many things. To what degree do we owe our place as "apex predator" on the earth to the alliances we made with other creatures? To what degree are we "we" without non-human companions? (It also reminds me of the quiet but very moving movie of a year or two ago, Alpha.)
Finals time here at UVA. I love the energy, the sense of schedules unmoored from the everyday and the 24-hour cycle. I also recognize that many of us, students and faculty and staff alike, are completely exhausted by the blitz of effort in the past few weeks. If you feel that way, rest assured: winter is coming.