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Educating an American child in China
So which works better: memorization or discovery on your own, self-discipline or creativity? This, to vastly oversimplify, is the crux of the debate between models of education in Asia and the West. As an educator who has taught at every level from middle school to...
read moreBring on the brilliance
As a professor at a rigorous university, I’ve seen a trend over the last decade that troubles me. My students (as bright and hardworking as they are) are less creative. Each incoming class seems to have a more difficult time coming up with ideas to write about; they...
read moreOn Being “Professional”
Recently I was subjected to one of those “icebreaker” exercises with coworkers at what I call my “day job” (that is, the one that provides most of my income). When asked to share something “interesting” about myself, I mentioned that for decades I’ve had a parallel...
read moreDead Man Walking
My husband and I recently attended the opera Dead Man Walking, based on the bestselling book by Sister Helen Prejean. It’s the story of the relationship between Sister Helen and Joe de Rocher, convicted of brutally killing two young people in rural Mississippi, as he...
read moreFrom World War I to Iraq and Afghanistan
I recently watched the 92-year-old silent film The Big Parade, King Vidor’s 1925 epic that stunned American audiences with its depiction of the horrors of trench warfare in World War I. The story, backed by a magnificent score in the restored film, follows three men—a...
read moreFilm: Peace Across a Fractured Landscape
I was hosting a lecture and film at a university when I realized how much I like film director Emir Kapetanovic. A polite-but-confused audience member noted that she was surprised to discover Emir's Muslim identity, and when he inquired, she noted that he didn't look...
read moreAmerican businesses abroad and U.S. foreign policy
When I accepted my company’s offer to move as head of their business to Pakistan in 1990, to Ukraine in 1996, and again to Pakistan in 2006, my mind was totally focused on the challenges of running the business. The consumer products industry is highly competitive –...
read moreFilm: When A Rose By Another Name Is Not…
...just as sweet. A Sarajevo Rose is a local Bosnian euphemism, cynical code for the shrapnel indentations left in the concrete from 120 mm Russian mortars lobbed by Serbian military, scars which look like imprints of roses. Roger Richards chose this ironic image as...
read moreNo One Brings a Casserole
Abbie and Mike adopted Joshua (not their real names) when he was two months old, a charming African American baby, “a sweetie-pie,” Abbie remembers. They were informed that his birth mother had used cocaine during pregnancy and that his birth father was incarcerated...
read moreWalks in a vanishing landscape
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh offers a personal account of what it is like to have the place you love taken away piece by piece and be helpless to stop the loss. It is a sad book, yet also lovely, giving one view of the...
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