I recently read an article about the importance of students having a “sense of mattering,” and that phrase has really stuck with me. In higher education, we talk a lot about belonging. We want students to feel connected to their university, their classes, their professors and each other. ...

A farmer can't make his plants grow, but he can create the conditions that lead to their flourishing. A society can't make its citizens virtuous, but it can nurture the institutions that lead to virtuous citizens. Great thinkers in Western civilization have long noted the importance of ...

History illuminates the present. I've been reading Stephen Kotkin's widely and justly praised multivolume biography of Joseph Stalin and have encountered many passages that illuminate the present. I learned, for example, that Stalin met the exiled Vladimir Lenin more than a decade before ...

Not only is it OK to talk about suicide, but asking someone who is struggling if he or she is considering suicide could actually be an important first step. Sometimes, asking the question opens the door to getting help. “Listen to their story, and let them know you care. Ask directly about ...

When asked about Labor Day, I suspect most people immediately think about the benefits of having a three-day weekend in early September. It's a day off! It's time to head out of town or go fishing or have a barbecue or go swimming or wrap up summer in some other fashion. But I've been ...

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 nears, the biggest disgrace is that the attack's evil mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has not been tried and sentenced to death. Blame the American Civil Liberties Union, in large part, for this injustice. The ACLU intervened at the start, insisting that ...