being not doing

One of our Christmas presents last year was a gift certificate for The Studio Theatre, on 14th Street just blocks from where we used to live. After investigating the shows playing this season, we chose Radio Golf, August Wilson‘s last play in his Pittsburgh Cycle, completed just before his death in 2005. I had heard [...]

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Webster decision, in which the Supreme Court allowed states to legislate restrictions to women’s access to abortion. Prior to Webster, it was believed that Roe prohibited such laws. While Casey was the later decision wherein the Supreme Court began the practice of evaluating the content of such restrictions—24 [...]

“We’re going to strengthen our critical thinking and our writing skills. These can be revolutionary tools if we make them so.”Ronald Takaki1939—2009. You’ll be missed, Dr. Takaki. By all of us who embraced your approach to understanding the country in which we live and honoring its rich history, and who pushed ourselves and our students [...]

The past few weeks have been exciting ones for gender parity in civil marriage, and it looks like there’s more to come. Iowa and Vermont have joined Massachusetts and Connecticut in ending the use of gender as a qualifier for marriage eligibility, and the legislatures of New Hampshire and Maine have passed their own bills [...]

It’s probably true that every small town has its dramas, but the ones in University Park seem to always fall out along lines of race and class. This shouldn’t surprise me, given that I live in a town that was incorporated with racial covenants in a county that was and is predominantly black. Language is [...]