Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a librarian involved professionally with issues of intellectual freedom. “Sometimes,” she said, “I get so tired of it. I wonder why I continue to fight.” I’ve thought about that conversation several times; if I could do an instant replay, I think I would tell her that I know why she keeps at it. It’s because it is so important.
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Category Archives: Academic Papers
Writing as Thinking
Until you can express a thought clearly and cogently, that thought does not yet exist.
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Social Responsibility, Accountability and U.S. Welfare Reform: The Context of America’s Faith Based
Accountability is problematic when there is not clarity of expectations or agreed-upon goals, and that lack of clarity has long been a characteristic of social welfare in the United States.
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Redemption and Rehabilitation: Charitable Choice and Criminal Justice
Unlike social services like job training and placement, day care or medical assistance, such drug and prison programs are not merely faith-based, they are faith-infused. It is not accidental that so many prison programs are called “Ministries.”
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Privatizing Education:The Liberal Democratic Idea, Constitutionalism,and the Politics of Vouchers
Arguments about the education of the young are at least as old as Socrates. However, it is fair to suggest that the voucher debate that has erupted over the past few years is qualitatively different from many that have preceded it. Rather than arguing about whether public schools are deficient, and if so, in what respects; rather than debating the merits of one "reform" over another, the issue has become whether America should continue to support a system of free, publicly controlled schools or whether government?s educational role should be reduced to dispensing vouchers to families, enabling them to "buy" educational services in the marketplace. It is a classic political confrontation, engaging partisan strategies and implicating political ideologies.
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