Mary Shelley's Frankenstein exposes the dark side of brilliance. Our most original and powerful creations, left unchecked by morality and responsibility, can become enormously destructive. Genius without maturity can...

Ignorance has many powerful advantages over knowledge. Typically it is simple and easy to communicate, while knowledge, by its very nature, usually tends to be nuanced and complex. Ignorance requires no evidence and no research. It can be endlessly repeated and rapidly spread. It inflames passions. Its pervasiveness wears down...

Here is what you do.

Here is what you do if, like me, the horrific slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School has left you with feelings of shock, horror, grief--and shame.

Shame, for me, because I have through my indifference allowed the legalized possession of assault weapons capable...

Watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post.

Sir Ken Robinson's TEDTalk on "Schools Killing Creativity" is enormously entertaining and so rousing that one feels sheepish about questioning any of its parts. Of course, he begins with the dual advantage of being very funny and very British,...

Twice in recent days I've been made to feel as if someone threw a spectacular party to which I was not invited.

The first time was while reading "Fixing College," Jeff Selingo's provocative op-ed in The New York Times. The foundational premise of the piece is that...

One of my favorite moments in Dickens' fiction comes early in Oliver Twist, when a very young and vulnerable Oliver is brought before the members of the board of the workhouse -- some "very sage, deep, philosophical men" who discern "what ordinary folks would never have discovered" about the institution...

The unexpected rise of Rick Santorum to the top of the Republican presidential field has provoked more than a few questions (and I suspect more than a few nightmares) among those who -- let us say -- think.

For me one of the most interesting questions bears directly upon my...

Steve Jobs was not a nice man: this is made abundantly clear by Walter Isaacson's compelling new biography of the propulsive force behind Apple. He was, however, almost preternaturally insightful about such things as the nature of the creative process, the relationship between a product and its user, and the...

I want to begin by congratulating Michael Ellsberg, who this past Sunday (Oct. 23) published in the pages of The New York Times an op-ed piece ("Will Dropouts Save America?") arguing that the key to American's economic future was the production of more college dropouts. Somehow he managed...

In a recent article in Forbes magazine -- "Steve Jobs' Liberal, Hippie Education" -- Dave Serchuk draws a direct connection between Jobs' passion for such arts as calligraphy and music and his remarkable success as a technological and business innovator. Jobs himself acknowledged this connection in his 2005...

The most powerful figure in today's Republican Party is not John Boehner or Mitch McConnell. It is not Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. It is not even Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin.

It is, of course, Grover Norquist, the man with The Pledge.

Norquist, who has never held elected public...

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, it turns out, had it all wrong. It was Jefferson who famously wrote that "if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," and it was Franklin who described the goal...

Prior to becoming an academic administrator I was for nearly two decades a teacher and student of Victorian literature, and in particular of the novels of Charles Dickens. This revelation typically brings responses ranging from mild surprise -- how... quaint -- to outright shock, as if I were a physician...

I get it. The United States, like much of the rest of the world, is peering into an abyss of debt that threatens our quality of life, our security, and our potential for future growth. I am the father of two children and very much want them to inherit a...

The question above is the one I get asked most often in my role as president of Macalester College and also happens to be the title and subject of a new book by Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman, both professors of economics and public policy at William and...