I haven't left the house much over the last couple of days. My sheets are bunched up at the foot of the bed, clothes are strewn all over the floor, and containers of half-eaten soup and Emergen-C scan the wasteland from their perches on desktops and chairs.

It's been wonderful....

Steve Jungkeit is a lecturer on ethics at Harvard Divinity School. He holds a Ph.D. in modern Christian thought from Yale, and he is the author of Spaces of Modern Theology: Geography and Power in Schleiermacher's World. Jungkeit is also an ordained Presbyterian minister and a father of...

Christopher Helali -- Marxist, U.S. Army Officer, community college professor, and graduate student at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology -- has some things to say.

In what follows, we discuss Buddhism, Marxism, Carl Sagan, the Acropolis, Keynesian economics, Ayn Rand, intersubjectivity, Bill Clinton, John Locke, and Slavoj Žižek.

Just for a moment, let's put aside questions of economic policy. Let's also put aside questions about how Mitt Romney made his money, or about the moral legitimacy of the system that allowed him to make money in the ways that he did. For just a second, let's focus on...

Peter Hershock is the author of Buddhism in the Public Sphere, which presents a set of Buddhist perspectives on a series of political and policy challenges. The final chapter, which serves as the jumping-off point for this interview, is a tour de force of wide-ranging theory and fresh...

Jonathan Watts is a member of the executive board of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB). He is also the coordinator of Think Sangha, a Buddhist think tank affiliated with INEB. In addition, he is a fellow at the Jodo Shu Research Institute...

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is core faculty and director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as a founding member of Barack Obama's National LGBT Leadership Council.

This interview took place in March,...

We face enormous challenges: global warming, poverty, health care, terrorism. Dealing with these challenges requires deep thinking about a range of moral questions. What is it to be a human being? How do we work? What's good for us? What do we owe to one another?

Unfortunately, HKS doesn't do...

Louis Menand is a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of English at Harvard and a staff writer for the New Yorker. His most recent book, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, traces the rise of the modern university system and asks hard questions...

Many mornings this spring, my roommate, Teddy, and I have speculated about how the Republican candidates are likely to fare in states we've never visited. Our third roommate, Ben, stays quiet and seeks out the most reliable polling information he knows. "InTrade has Romney up by 4," Ben will say....

In his lecture on "The Reality of the Unseen," William James describes how some people perceive gods or spirits just as vividly as they perceive objects directly in front of them. He quotes a fellow professor on his experiences with a mysterious, spirit-like presence.

For several nights, the...

Christopher Robichaud's office at Harvard Kennedy School is filled with role-playing board games, at least one giant John F. Kennedy action figure, and hundreds upon hundreds of books. Most are standard philosophy volumes, but several shelves are devoted to his other passion: horror.

Robichaud's penchant for the...

Beginning in 2003, Democrat Artur Davis represented Alabama's 7th District for four terms in Congress. Following a defeat in Alabama's 2010 gubernatorial primary, he retired from politics. Late last year, Davis left the Democratic Party and became an independent.

Davis is currently a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of...

Carlo Rotella is one of the most exciting thinkers I've ever met. He's a professor, writer, and public intellectual, and his mind ranges everywhere: from boxing to the blues and free play to fantasy novels.

A couple of weeks ago,...

Yup, not a typo. Romney made those remarks in an interview with Soledad O'Brien Wednesday morning.

After all, he said, "We have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it."

Several...

I'd been in New Hampshire for several days to follow the Republican primary campaign and see the candidates in person. On Monday, January 9, I traveled to Hudson, NH to hear a speech by Mitt Romney at the Gilchrist Metal Fabricating Company. The event had been advertised on Romney's website...

I'm pretty sure Rick Santorum lied to my face on Friday.

I was in Manchester, N.H. for one of Santorum's "Faith, Family, and Freedom" town hall meetings. As the event was getting underway, I asked Bill Boyd, one of Santorum's spokesmen, about an event earlier in the day in which...

The first time that the Gingrich campaign played Joe Esposito's "You're the Best," (viz. Karate Kid) I thought, This is going to be all right. After all, that song is boss.

This isn't true of most of the songs you hear at campaign rallies. And there's a reason...

Jack Abramoff helped break Congress, and now he's trying to fix it.

In the mid-2000s, Abramoff was earning $20 million a year selling his clients access to the Republican House leadership. He owned restaurants, flew on private jets and set up golf outings for congressmen on an obscure Pacific Ocean...

Michael Dukakis was the 1988 Democratic nominee for president.

MATT BIEBER: In an interview with Katie Couric a few years ago, you described yourself as the first Democrat to face the "Republican attack machine" and said that you and your team...

MICHAEL DUKAKIS: Oh,...