by Leo Morris During my tenure as president of one of the nonprofit boards I served on, there was a dispute between board members and the executive director over something the director proposed to do. He thought – and about half the board agreed with him – that the action would be consistent with his duties under our bylaws. About half the board, including me, thought he was overstepping his authority. As the board took…

WHENEVER THE NEWS from the southern border worsens, we distribute as a public service this summary of the great Arnold Toynbee’s 12-volume “Study of History,” finished in 1961. It describes in present tense his cycle of a civilization, as prescient as it is troubling: “The third response (of a declining civilization) concerns the implosion of boundaries. Extension of empire is weakening its power to keep ‘things together.’ Sooner or later the pressure on the limes (as the borders of the Roman Empire were called) will be…

MANY OF THE BEST U.S. historians — David McCullough and Gordon Wood come to mind — have pointed out the flaws in the New York Times “1619 project.” It nonetheless continues to be proposed for inclusion in the K-12 curriculum, a tract that suggests the United States was born with racial inequality and white supremacy as its DNA, and that this genetic marker has not changed.  A member of our foundation, a teacher, argues that the more accurate and…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. Job availability for inexperienced workers is the primary reason why most economists object to raising the minimum wage.      The proposedRaise the Wage Act of 2021 (H.R. 603) would raise the federal minimum wage in steps to $15 an hour by 2025. Presently, most states have set a higher minimum wage, but this plan would eliminate a sub-minimum wage that allows businesses to pay teens less during the first 90 days…

by Mark Franke “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.” Recall that advertising jingle from 1974? It had quite a catchy tune and was a successful advertising campaign by all accounts. Think back to what America was like in 1974. There was the Watergate scandal, resulting in the resignation of an elected president. The Vietnam War was theoretically winding down, but the only winding down was America’s military presence there, paving the way for a…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. I wonder if I’ll get “canceled” someday. I could trip up and say something awkward or inappropriate — and get crushed for it. It could be a phrase in a Facebook post or a newspaper article like this. It could be a slip in the classroom that gets reported by a student. It doesn’t bother me a lot. I know I’m not perfect in word, deed, motive, or thought. And I…

by Leo Morris None of my best friends are black. OK, I apologize. I did that just to get your attention. We have become so race conscious in the last couple of years, I figured that sentence would cause everybody to read further, if for no other reason than to see if I would say something irredeemably stupid. What I really want to talk about is friendship, specifically what it means to be a friend.…

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge. ~ Carl Jung A FRIEND THINKS he was present at the beginning of critical race theory. It was a seventh-grade bible study in the early 1960s in a small town on the Great Plains.  A student from a nearby college was leading the study and, hoping for a moment of agonizing self-appraisal if not spiritual awakening, she asked each of the participants to say whether they would drink…

by Leo Morris I’ve been trying to make sense of NFTs, those digital creations called “non-fungible tokens” that can sell for millions of dollars. So, naturally, I thought of the squirrel.  It showed up one day underneath the tree that stood in the outdoor break area for Fort Wayne Newspapers, the umbrella company for the morning Journal Gazette and afternoon News-Sentinel. Only JG columnist Frank Gray and I were there at the time, and the squirrel walked right up,…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. In April, 2003, Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey canceled a Cooperstown event celebrating the 15th anniversary of the movie “Bull Durham.” Petroskey, a former Bush administrator, did not want its stars, Tom Robbins and Susan Sarandon, famous for their opposition to the Iraq war, to appear or speak. As Petroskey put it, “There was a chance of politics being injected into The Hall during these sensitive times, and I made a…