Even before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia under Putin was hurtling backwards into an authoritarian system without the relatively free press that emerged under Gorbachev in the late 1980s, and without the space to debate government policy and address social ills. It is return to historical Russian habits of resentments toward plurality, diversity of thought, and Western-style permissiveness. But Russia is not going away. So how should the U.S. and Europe respond going forward? What kind of relationship can we have?
Millions of Americans who work earn too low a wage to keep them very far above poverty. Their problems come in chain reactions of ills that cannot be effectively addressed one at a time but require holistic solutions. This we saw during the pandemic, when frontline "essential" workers had to expose themselves to Covid to keep making their hourly wages, and suffered disproportional health problems as a result. Child malnutrition--with accompanying damage to brain development--was exacerbated, and family stress has increased. There are solutions if American society is willing. We have the skills, not yet the will.
Conservatives deride liberals for seeing the Constitution as a living document whose basic civil liberties provisions can be adapted to modern society. But those conservatives--most notably on the Supreme Court--are pulling constitutional interpretation backwards into the 1700s, which risks stifling those rights and suffocating the Constitution's soaring principles. The Framers were not so short-sighted; they wrote the text to enshrine rights as transcendent, recognizing that they could not imagine a world centuries hence. In many areas codified by the Bill of Rights, the country is losing the vibrant nature of what is, in fact, a living document--which is the reason that it has lived so long.
Israel has gone through a transformation of its place in the Middle East. The Abraham Accords, negotiated under President Trump, established relations with more Arab countries and downgraded the Palestinian question. Iran's rising threat has propelled some Arab nations to see Israel as more of an ally than an adversary, on the understanding that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But where does that leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Is a two-state solution still possible? Is it fair to accuse Israel of apartheid in its treatment of Palestinians. A look at the clash of two nationalisms and the friction between two historical narratives, worsened buy a relatively recent religious component: extreme Islam vs. extreme Judaism.
Gone are the days--almost gone--when you could turn on a broadcast, pick up a newspaper, or go to a website and get all sides of a controversy. The rise of opinionated "reporting" and the dwindling of balanced, fair-minded coverage is destined to damage the democracy, whose citizens rely on information untainted by bias and political distortion. Simultaneously, local news coverage has disappeared in many parts of the country as newspapers have closed, leaving a vacuum into which the most polarizing screeds have flowed. Why has this happened, and what can be done about it?
The event with Dave Shipler was fantastic. He did a great job in his keynote presentation and in visiting with students, faculty, and staff throughout the day.
Texas A&M University Texarkana
- Nov 23 2015
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