Archives for November 2014

I recently found myself on a Friday night amid a group of twenty-somethings, mostly women, who were celebrating their periods. Yes, you read that correctly. The students of the women’s resource center on campus decided to host a “menarche party” in honor of their monthly bleeding. They wore festive ...

The time: November 9–10, 1938. The place: Germany. The casualties: More than 7,000 Jewish shops along with 1,574 synagogues damaged or destroyed. One hundred Jews murdered; 30,000 imprisoned in concentration camps. They were the first victims of a racial purge that went on to claim more than 6 million lives. Now, 76 years after Kristallnacht, I am ...

Teaching race is a boulder.  And up the mountain I push it. When I teach race, I feel like Sisyphus because I never seem to get anywhere. The questions repeat and the anxieties recur each semester.  It’s always the same: I know what parts of assigned texts will provoke ...

The Onion is a paragon of satirical news. Unfortunately, too many of us are not in on the joke. Literally Unbelievable is a website that captures those priceless moments when beguiled individuals post “news” items from The Onion as if they were a reputable source of information instead of an ...

There are any number of reasons persons become theological school deans. Some reasons are personal, while some are a product of a particular context and its circumstance. In my experience, most deans answer the vocational calling of dean for good-intentioned reasons, sometimes, even noble ones. Most simply want to serve ...