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Blog 3 Columns

  • Dear Professor Tirrell: Speech isn’t Toxic, People Are

    Dear Professor Tirrell: Speech isn’t Toxic, People Are0

    In Jean-Paul Sartre’s play “No Exit,” the character Joseph Garcin concludes that torture and other forms of physical punishment pale in comparison to the torment of poor company. So he pronounces that “Hell is other people.” The same cynical view overcomes me when intelligent people theorize about the harm caused by offensive speech. Lynne Tirrell,

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  • Anti-Homework Trend: Freeing Kids from a Culture of Dependency?

    Anti-Homework Trend: Freeing Kids from a Culture of Dependency?0

    Late last summer, Texas teacher Brandy Young made internet waves when she sent a note about homework to the parents of her students. Instead of the normal spend-30-minutes-a-day-on-homework command that parents normally hear, Mrs. Young’s note informed them that she would not be giving homework at all. Instead, she asked families to spend more time

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  • The Death of Outdoor Recess

    The Death of Outdoor Recess0

    A mom in New York tells me she’s in a fight with her kid’s preschool. You might think she’s unhappy with the zero-tolerance policy for Kombucha? Too much enrichment? Not enough? In fact, it’s none of the above. Her fight is over the children playing outside. The mother wants her kid to be outside more

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  • Lincoln’s Suicide Note

    Lincoln’s Suicide Note0

    The depths of Abraham Lincoln’s misery following the death of fiancée Ann Rutledge is well known. (Lincoln’s close friend Josh Speed provided a detailed and captivating recollection of the Lincoln-Rutledge courtship, an unlikely romance that was nothing short of Shakespearean in both beauty and tragedy.) Lincoln was remarkably frank and open about his persistent “melancholy”, which

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  • Justice and ‘Social Justice’: Two Very Different Things

    Justice and ‘Social Justice’: Two Very Different Things0

    Recently, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen wrote in the Washington Post of “The most important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance” — “with liberty and justice for all.” Allen recognized that justice required “equality before the law” and that freedom exists “only when it is for everyone.” But she confused democracy — defined as progressives “build[ing] a distributed

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  • Former Stanford Provost: ‘The Threat from Within’

    Former Stanford Provost: ‘The Threat from Within’0

    Stanford News recently featured an excerpt from former Trustee John Etchemendy about the challenges higher education is facing. He begins by arguing, Universities are a fundamental force of good in the world. At their best, they mine knowledge and understanding, wisdom and insight, and then freely distribute these treasures to society at large. Theirs is

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