In the wake of President Obama's State of the Union Address last month, many Americans are talking about college affordability. As they have been. As well they should. Along with health care and unemployment, the cost of college is a defining issue for our country. It is an issue that...

While the scandal at Penn State remains in the headlines, with good reason, we should also focus attention on a significant problem facing student athletes: concussions in college football. In the weeks ahead, along with the excitement of post-season play, we will, in all likelihood, see at close range the...

Last week, in the midst of the turmoil related to the nation's debt ceiling, I testified at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security, chaired by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), focusing on the economic imperative for enacting immigration reform. The thrust...

National security. Global political crises. The international economy. When we think about these perennial and pressing concerns, the word "humanities" probably doesn't spring to mind, but it should.

That was the take-away message from the briefing I was privileged to moderate last month before approximately 60 Congressional staffers and...

How ironic that in a time of rapidly increasing connectivity around the globe, we are still so far from understanding other cultures, especially those that observe religions and traditions different from our own. How unsettling to observe fear and, often, hate and to sense the widening chasm between Americans and...

When my father, his parents and siblings left western Russia (now Belarus) for the United States, amidst a torrent of other immigrants attracted by the promise of our shores, he took it for granted that through hard work, adherence to the law, and an earnest desire to become a naturalized...

Dear New Members of the 112th Congress,

I write to congratulate you on your election, to thank you for shouldering this responsibility at a difficult time for our nation, and to ask you to consider supporting some critical legislative priorities related to higher education.

I won't bore you with...

The long, contentious, and often self-interested debate on whether higher education is becoming too expensive has become even more strident since the Great Recession. Is there really a "crisis" in college costs? Are colleges to blame?

The Delta Cost Project and other economic studies inform the discussion...

The most wretched nonmonetary consequence of our nation's economic distress over the past two years, in my view, is an acceleration of our country's loss of values. No, I am not referring to coded political messages about "family values." I mean values as related to language, literature, culture, and ethics,...