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Columns

Life is all about improvising our way toward courage

Some fear rarely announces itself. It moves quietly, almost politely, and takes a chair in the corner of your chest and waits. Some days, I forget it is there. Other days, it stirs the cauldron of my stomach until I’m forced to account for it. For most of my life, I believed bravery ...

Accounting for different learning styles

The recent Harvard report on grading practices has drawn a lot of attention from colleges and universities across the country, particularly for its claim that grade inflation remains critical. The rising number of A grades assigned to students has prompted calls to return to traditional ...

Politicians, please drop the creepy smiles

It seems half the country’s political figures have been instructed to grin like a theme-park greeter. Supposedly, that makes them seem friendly, approachable, relatable. When I want humanoid patter, I turn to chatbots. They’re more convincing. Why this epidemic of wax museum smiles? ...

Conservative giants worthy of praise

While only a small number of us live to be 100, everyone’s birthday has a centenary date. For historians who seem mostly to be of the liberal persuasion and obituary writers (ditto) the way the 100th anniversary of a conservative’s birth usually results in one of the following: Ignored, ...

Our policy should help to serve our interests

Is it too much to ask for immigrants who love America and its system of government? That’s a question that President Trump has been asking, with an especially high level of vitriol, in the wake of the horrific shooting of members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., the day before ...

Are we closing the door on immigration? We haven’t quite yet

Can the United States come up with an immigration policy that will prove sustainable? Two writers whom I respect and take delight in reading, despite their widely differing views, Tyler Cowen, who favors more immigration, and Christopher Caldwell, who favors less, have their doubts. Both, ...