Many people assume the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is particularly difficult to understand, perhaps even convoluted beyond a solution. When I started educating myself about U.S. foreign policy in the late 1980s — topics like Central America, Iraq and Iran, and corporate-led globalization — I avoided what I assumed was the dizzyingly complicated topic of Israel/Palestine. But […]

In an op/ed in the Austin American-Statesman, Robert Jensen and Patrick Youngblood of Third Coast point out that while Texas politics is particularly reactionary, the deeper problem is a U.S. political culture that can’t face reality. We spend little time decrying the ideological fanaticism of Republicans but instead highlight differences between our work on global […]

Many well meaning Americans trying to follow foreign policy are treated to a disjointed, confusing narrative that jumps from one flashpoint to another. Every few weeks a new crisis dominates the news, the reporting adds little to our understanding of the way the world works, and the resulting debate is shallow and familiar. Current news […]

Summer 2012, like most summers in recent memory, has brought an assortment of extreme weather that is becoming familiar – record-breaking fires (this time in Colorado), an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan breaking off of Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, and June was the 328th consecutive month with a global temperature higher than the 20th century […]

As a public high school teacher and a parent I think often about the role of schools in our society and closely follow the current debate over school reform. Recently I read a concise, insightful letter to the New York Times that has stuck in my mind, almost haunted me, since — To the Editor: […]