Faculty Commentary

In his famous novel, The Plague, Albert Camus discussed the idea of plague as being akin to a despotic rule under which everyone, starting from the warden to the humblest delinquent, was under a life sentence. This insight is true for any pandemic including COVID–19 because the infection spreading microbe infects both rich and poor [...]

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As we watch the revival of the first wave and anticipate an inevitable second wave, the intentionally inept federal, uneven and dangerous state and local, and self-interested business response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a horrifying experience. As the reality of the situation unfolds, the breach of public trust is breathtaking. The clear indifference of [...]

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From the beginnings of his crudely acrimonious presidency, Donald Trump has actively undermined US foreign policy relationships. On urgently key matters of world politics and international law, Mr. Trump’s typically invalid conclusions have generally been drawn from narrowly belligerent premises. Truly, the main problem with such faulty presidential arguments, however, has not been Trump’s gratuitously [...]

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Just last week, we were saddened by the loss of Aimee Stephens at age 59. Ms. Stephens was a Detroit funeral director who, in 2013, announced a gender transition that exposed her employer’s deep intolerance toward transgender people. For seven years, she challenged the harsh dismissal and loss of livelihood that followed the announcement. Although [...]

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With food emerging out as a heavily traded commodity internationally, the majority of the nations around the world have become melting pots of civilization, leading to the increasing interconnectedness of the global food system and complexity of the supply chains. With the long-winded food supply chains there exists information asymmetry between the consumers and the [...]

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Co-parenting will get trickier as stay-at-home orders are lifted. During stay at home orders, parents were dealing with uniform instructions about how to act. Co-parenting was still an issue when parents considered how to apply the guidance to their child and custody situations. These issues finally started to feel under control for many parents when [...]

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President Trump in recent days unveiled his latest tactic to clamp down on sanctuary jurisdictions. Having failed in his earlier efforts, the President now seeks to withhold the next round of federal stimulus funding from sanctuary jurisdictions in order to strong-arm them into changing their policies. Congress should categorically reject this hostile move and, instead, [...]

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“What does not benefit the entire hive is no benefit to the bee.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations From the beginning, Donald Trump’s ideology of “America First” has been misconceived. In essence, any concocted presidential notion that exploitative and self-aggrandizing American postures can propel the United States in gainful directions is grievously fanciful. Looked at somewhat differently, [...]

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For better or worse, the paradigmatic television show of the coronavirus pandemic is Netflix’s documentary miniseries Tiger King, an excruciatingly intimate reflection on a feud between two tiger-fanciers. On the one side is Carole Baskin, the rather sanctimonious leader of a big cat sanctuary in Florida. And on the other is Joe Exotic, the “colorful” [...]

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In 1907, Congress passed a law that punished US citizen women for marrying “foreigners.” In March of 1931, Congress rejected this discrimination. But in March of 2020, Congress reincarnated it by passing a law that punishes both US citizen men and women who are married to non-citizens. The March 2020 CARES Act was designed to help support American families [...]

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