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Blog 3 Columns

  • Teachers Report Increasing Abuse at the Hands of Students

    Teachers Report Increasing Abuse at the Hands of Students0

    Teachers have always had a hard job. It takes a dedicated person to prepare lessons, manage a classroom full of children, and deal with unhappy parents. But the role of teacher has become even more difficult — even dangerous — in recent years. One quarter of teachers report being the objects of student violence and

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  • How Totalitarians Force Confessions From Innocent People

    How Totalitarians Force Confessions From Innocent People0

    I recently re-read George Orwell’s anti-Soviet fable Animal Farm for the first time since high school, and I found myself at a loss to explain one of the book’s darkest scenes to the student I was tutoring. In this scene, Napoleon (Orwell’s stand-in for Stalin) consolidates his power over Animal Farm (i.e. the Soviet Union)

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  • How Artificial Intelligence Systems Could Threaten Democracy

    How Artificial Intelligence Systems Could Threaten Democracy0

    U.S. technology giant Microsoft has teamed up with a Chinese military university to develop artificial intelligence systems that could potentially enhance government surveillance and censorship capabilities. Two U.S. senators publicly condemned the partnership, but what the National Defense Technology University of China wants from Microsoft isn’t the only concern. As my research shows, the advent

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  • Arizona Case Shows the Difference Between Campus Free Speech and Harassment

    Arizona Case Shows the Difference Between Campus Free Speech and Harassment0

    Three Arizona students may soon learn a valuable lesson: There’s a difference between exercising your free speech on campus and blocking someone else’s attempt to do the same. In March, three University of Arizona students shouted down a group of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, and then chased them to their cars, hurling insults

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  • The Rights Glut

    The Rights Glut0

    When someone talks about having “rights,” what do they mean?   I was asked recently whether I thought same-sex parents had the “right” to adopt. I said that I didn’t think anyone had a “right” to adopt.    We decide who should adopt on the basis of what is good for the child being adopted, not

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  • Research Reveals Teenagers Actually Love the Bard

    Research Reveals Teenagers Actually Love the Bard0

    When you think of inner-city teenagers, what springs to mind? For many, it’s hoodies, video games — and probably hating Shakespeare. But my research proves that this stereotype is far from the truth. Shakespeare holds a contested place in the English national curriculum as the only compulsory writer to be studied between the ages of

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  • Red Flag Gun Laws Are a Page out of Dystopian Science Fiction Novels

    Red Flag Gun Laws Are a Page out of Dystopian Science Fiction Novels0

    Red flag gun laws are suddenly popular in America. Colorado recently became the fifteenth state to pass such a law. The law, the tenth such passed since the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, will allow authorities to seize the private property—firearms—of someone deemed a risk to himself or others after successfully petitioning

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  • A Legal Immigrant’s Lament

    A Legal Immigrant’s Lament0

    In the late 1940s, my father, Kenneth Billingsley, a veteran of World War II, was working in a mine in the northern reaches of Manitoba. So through no fault of my own, I was born a long way north of the border. Despite childhood stints in Alliance, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, when I sought to

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  • Why Easter Is Called Easter, and Other Little-Known Facts About the Holiday

    Why Easter Is Called Easter, and Other Little-Known Facts About the Holiday0

    (This story was originally published by Intellectual Takeout on April 13, 2017.) On April 21, Christians will be celebrating Easter, the day on which the resurrection of Jesus is said to have taken place. The date of celebration changes from year to year. The reason for this variation is that Easter always falls on the

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