Writing & essays
Ideas built for public life.
Essays, briefings, and public scholarship on power, citizenship, institutions, memory, stewardship, and democratic life.
Higher Education
General Education Is Being Rewritten
The civic purpose of college is being displaced by workforce outcomes, institutional metrics, and a narrower account of what education is for.
USA @ 250
Me at 50, America at 250
How a Bicentennial quarter prepared me for stewardship, citizenship, and hope over five decades.
The Empires Strike Back · Article V
The Fears Democracies Hide Inside Their Stories
How fear shapes what citizens remember, forget, and defend.
The Empires Strike Back · Article IV
The Empires Strike Back — Article IV
Normalization, exhaustion, and the slow rewriting of what citizens accept as ordinary.
The Empires Strike Back · Article III
The Empires Strike Back — Article III
How institutions manage perception and shape what a democracy is willing to see.
The Empires Strike Back · Article II
The Empires Strike Back — Article II
The psychology of compliance, and how institutions secure consent without force.
The Empires Strike Back · Article I
The Empires Strike Back — Article I
Why power returns, and how democracies forget the lessons they once learned.