Conservative commentators have been quick to jump on the anti-immigration reform bandwagon by attempting to tie the recent bombing incidents in Boston to further tightening immigration policy.

For example, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham on April 22, 2013 brought up suspected brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by

What do Reince Priebus and Timothy Dolan have in common?

Mr. Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, has been attempting to "rebrand" the Republican Party, and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Catholic Archbishop of New York, is attempting to "rebrand" the Catholic Church as both of these...

Appearing on Piers Morgan's program on CNN, Thursday (March 28), evangelical Christian minister Franklin Graham, son of renowned minister Billy Graham, explained the reason behind his resolute opposition to marriage for same-sex couples:

"It's what God says, Piers. God is the one who defined marriage, not government, but it's...

We all hold concurrent "social identities" (consciously or unconsciously) based on socially constructed categories: For example, on our personal and physical characteristics, on our moral beliefs and values, on our ages, abilities, interests, professions, socioeconomic class backgrounds, and on our cultural, racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, sex, gender, sexual and affectional,...

Poll after poll has found that the Catholic papacy is out of step with its increasingly shrinking U.S. flock. On the topic of abortion, 55 percent of U.S. Catholics do not want the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision overturned, 67 percent favor pre-marital sex, 71 percent approve of divorce,...

On a cold and windy day this week, outfitted in my warmest winter outfit from head to toes, I entered the Memorial Union on our campus with the intention of mailing a package to my cousin in Portland, Ore. Soon after I pulled open the door through my double-layered gloves...

Though the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) reaffirmed its ban on gay, bisexual or transgender scouts and scout leaders last year, talk was in the air that the BSA's National Executive Board was to make an announcement on whether it was willing to reconsider its previous stance. Recently, however, the...

"...Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!..."

Like the noble words from Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New Colossus" engraved on a bronze...

(As an opening caveat, we must remember that not all people with uteri are women and not all women have uteri. Therefore, I use the term "women" throughout this commentary to refer to people with uteri with the capacity to conceive and carry to term, including transgender people with the...

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths -- that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall." -- President Barack Obama, Second Inaugural Speech, January 21, 2013

President Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 9, 2013, tapped the Rev. Louie Giglio of Atlanta's Passion City Church to deliver the benediction during his second inauguration overlooking the Mall of the U.S. Capitol Building later this month. However, less than 48 hours later, with the controversy surrounding Giglio's past statements...

"Sexism" I define as the overarching system of advantages bestowed on males. It is prejudice and discrimination based on sex, especially against females and intersex people, and is founded on a patriarchal structure of male dominance promoted through individual/interpersonal, institutional, and social/cultural systems.

Throughout history, examples abound of male domination...

Former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, on Fox News, placed blame for the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., by stating: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised...

Each time I hear of yet another incident of gun violence, I think back to the very first thing that caught my eye as I entered the grounds of the Iowa Republican Party Presidential Straw Poll in the summer of 2011. Three young children, I would guess between the ages...

A Keynote Address:
"Research: Our Opportunity to Challenge, Change, and Grow"
Iowa State University Graduate Student Forum
Monday, December 10, 2012

While contemplating the topic and eventual focus of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I was having difficulty deciding since so many...

The Associated Press (AP) revealed recently that its new stylebook will no longer include the words "homophobia" and "Islamophobia" in political or social contexts. AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told Politico that the terms are "just off the mark" and seem "inaccurate."

In psychology a "phobia"...

I had the pleasure of visiting my cousin in Antwerp, Belgium. One sunny day as we walked the promenade in this beautiful city, Charles, a fluent speaker of seven languages, posed a riddle to me: He asked, "What is it called when someone can speak three languages?" "Trilingual?" I guessed....

President Barack Obama, as we all know by now, won a second term as President of the United States collecting 332 to former Governor Willard Mitt Romney's 206 Electoral College votes, while garnering 61,173,739 votes to Romney's 58,167,260. In fact, the Republican Party has only carried...

A child born to modest means
A proud Hawaiian native son
Raised with love, care and faith
Hard working in all he's done

Successful in the Ivy League
Earning what he had gained
Returning to his community
Never forgetting from where he came

Last week ultra-right-wing rabbi Noson Leiter of Torah Jews for Decency referred to Hurricane Sandy as "divine justice" for the state of New York's 2011 legalization of marriage for same-sex couples. Leiter, referring to lower Manhattan as "one of the national centers of homosexuality," argued that...