The Buddha said to Subhuti, “In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, in that place there is deception. If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you…
Edward W. Said, Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews Edited by Gauri Viswanathan Pantheon Books (2001) With four friends (from St. Charles, Troy, and Los Angeles), I am reading and discussing the recently published collection of…
for Laura Lapinski, who makes me laugh while lunching at Medina Grill, walking around the CWE, and hanging out in Left Bank Books There’s 15 to 20 Allen Ginsberg poems I’ve loved, and shared with…
There are several journalists worth reading in order to understand what is happening with Julian Assange and what is at stake. I’d suggest, too, that you avoid all media coverage, at least until you have…
As a young graduate student, I had the good fortune to be exposed to the thinking of Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan, who died in the mid-eighties, was a Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian. Many of my…
Humanity is divided into two categories—the people who count for something and the people who count for nothing. To believe in God is not a decision that we can make. All we can do is…
A huge amount of work obviously remains to be done, and as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza enters its third decade one realizes that the magnitude of liberation required can only…
Shirin Ebadi, with Azadeh Moaveni, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope But a personal story is more powerful than any dry summary of why a given law should be changed. To attract people’s…
Despite the prevalence of international criminal law and human rights law in our modern geopolitical discourse, both fields are in their infancy – international accountability finding its roots in the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the…
Thich Nhat Hanh, Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change Immediately before I read this book by Nhat Hanh, I read David Grossman on the advances in psychology to get us to kill, to…