Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Female Dollar

President Obama is considering appointing, among others, Janet Yellen as chairman of the Federal reserve. Predictably, opponents and proponents both take her gender into consideration: she’d be the first female head of the central bank. Yellen’s supporters think having a woman as chair would amount to a breakthrough for gender equality, but opponents have worried […]

History and Faith

There’s a famous (among academics) essay by Hayden White I often ask suffering students to read, called “the Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” a ponderous title indeed. White reproduces excerpts from the Annals of St. Gall, a medieval manuscript with multiple authors. It looks like this 709. Hard winter. Duke Gottfried died. […]

Syria and Moral Crusade

Woodrow Wilson is famous for irritating the Europeans. After WWI, when England, France, and the US met to decide the status of post war Europe, Wilson kept insisting on draping practical political objectives and national self interest in the high flown language of moral crusade. Historians always cite as an example George Clemenceau, who when […]