by Leo Morris In this time of national nervousness, with pandemic fears and civil unrest widening our already vast political divide, I am just one of the little people waiting for the change our leaders have promised. And they all have done it. Sometimes, they just hint that a new direction is called for. Donald Trump pledged to make the country great again. George W. Bush vowed to practice “compassionate conservatism,” and George H.W. Bush…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. I had an interesting moment with a student this summer. He emailed to ask for a religious accommodation to join his family in celebrating Eid al-Fitr — a Muslim holy day that celebrates the end of Ramadan. I’m happy to grant schedule extensions in these cases. Until the email, I knew virtually nothing about him. I knew his name: a Western first name and an East-Asian last name. But the course…

by Craig Ladwig I may be hypersensitive to the plight of 79-year-old Charlotte Martin, who lost her position last week with a county political party. The Indianapolis Star, you see, found out she was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It is easy for me to imagine that generations from now my great-great-grandaughters, should they have joined a Daughters of the Vietnam War, will be similarly shamed for being my descendants, linked by ancestry to another “Lost Cause ideology.” That’s…

by Leo Morris “Indiana” has to go, so we’ll need to come up with a new name for the state. That’s not an outrageous statement. It can be logically inferred from remarks by Gov. Eric Holcomb. At a recent press conference, a reporter hit the governor with a question that went something like: In light of recent debates over changing the names of sports teams and other entities with designations of Native American origin, do…

WE WOULD LIKE to know more about the thinking at Indiana University and Purdue regarding students from China. Specifically, how it was decided to bring so many of one group of foreign student to campus in the first place. But nobody is answering what might be called “the China question.” There is the money, of course. The one million international students currently enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities contributed nearly $41 billion to the economy, says the Association of International…

OUR SYMPATHY GOES OUT to the dozen or so of you who were counting on Eric Holcomb to stand strong against the culture-cancelers and statue-topplers. Here is the governor responding to a question yesterday on changing the name “Indiana”: “You know, I haven’t given that any thought, although I’ve talked with Native American friends of mine about our shared past, our heritage, and how we can do a better job — we being myself, this administration — sharing…

(Editor’s Note: We are reposting Mark Frank’s essay on Seattle as the winner of this quarter’s Prescience Trophy.) by Mark Franke “If we could only be more like Seattle . . .” How often have you heard that comment from city leaders, Chamber of commerce spokesmen and other economic development officials? They conjure up images of highly paid millennials living in expensive downtown condos and freely spending their disposable income at all sorts of retail establishments.…

by Andrew Horning My first job in healthcare was in the arbovirus surveillance unit of the Indiana Board of Health in the mid 1970s. My job was all about the flaviviruses carried by birds and mosquitos. As a young man thus indoctrinated in the hemorrhagic syndromes, fatal mucosal disease, birth defects and encephalitis caused by such viruses, I became one of the many with serious concerns about humanity’s preparedness for pandemics. We really could all…

by Leo Morris I’d like to confess something I feel guilty about. It happened a long time ago, back in high school. One of my classmates – I won’t give his name or even a pseudonym, for obvious reasons – was a gangly, pimply wreck of a teenager. His walk was a shambling lurch, his speech a jumbled garble, his dress grotesquely scruffy. He was the odd one of our class, the goofy one who…

MARGARET MENGE, an alumnus of Indiana University, has filed a complaint against the university in Monroe County Circuit Court alleging violation of the state public records law. Menge, a freelance journalist, is researching the policy of state universities regarding students from China. According to the complaint, the university denied Menge’s request for emails unless her formal request stated both the sender and recipient. This, she argues, violates the letter and spirit of the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, Indiana Code 5-14-3). Menge quotes…