“Beware the Ides of March!” Thus the soothsayer warned Emperor Julius Caesar on the 15th of March, 44 B.C. On that day, Caesar, who had overturned the Roman republic and made himself a tyrant, was assassinated by a group of Senators, including his friend, Brutus. In the eponymous play by William Shakespeare, the Senators begin
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It’s no secret that governments in the 20th century killed a lot of people, but few did it with greater efficiency than Joe Stalin, whose policy of forced collectivization killed an estimated 14.5 million people between 1930-1937. Stalin employed terror with a zeal and skill few could match, marginalizing rivals such as Leon Trotsky, who was expelled from the
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How many times a day do you check your smartphone? According to a recent survey, the typical American checks once every six-and-a-half minutes, or approximately 150 times every day. Other research has found that number to be as high as 300 times a day. For young people, the attachment is particularly acute: 53 percent of
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For most of the time I live in a bubble of sanity, comfortably cushioned from the malaise that seems all consuming in the wider culture. Occasionally, however, I leave my comfortable bubble to travel to speaking engagements and conferences. When I do so, I’m struck by how bad things really are. This was brought home
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In a typical week, I get four or five inquiries from media relating to some higher education issue. Five years ago, perhaps five or ten percent of those inquiries related to university executive compensation, especially the salaries of presidents. Now, probably 40-50 percent of the queries are on that topic. The public is increasingly interested
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The last several years have seen a rise in articles sounding alarms about the decline of marriage. A Salon article and its accompanying graph from earlier in the summer are a perfect example. According to Salon, marriage rates have dropped roughly 30 percent since 1980, to 6.9 per 1,000 people, and everything from religious decline
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