Author Archives: Sheila

Coming Out

I have to admit it—after years of denial, internal struggle with my emotions and with my very identity, I can no longer kid myself. Republicans just don’t attract me any more. In fact, as the years have passed, they have begun to repel me. It wasn’t always like this. Once, I was able to be passionate about them. But the party has changed, and my basic instincts haven’t.
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The Important Third Sector

A recurring criticism of academic life is that it is too theoretical. The public tends to be impatient with basic research; we want instant gratification, and often the practical applications of scholarship do not become evident for decades. That’s why a project researching Indiana nonprofits underway at Indiana University is so exciting: the results of the work will be both important and almost immediately useful.
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First Principles

I know I cannot expect too much at the beginning of the semester, so it shouldn’t have taken me by surprise when a young woman in my class asked “Isn’t the Bill of Rights intended to protect our civil liberties until we infringe the rights of the majority?” Of course, she had it exactly backwards: the right of the majority to instruct government to act on its behalf is constrained by the Bill of Rights, which limits the right of those majorities to infringe individual freedom.
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