Archives: Magazine Post

These days, it feels hard to have hope. From climate change, global conflict, and the lingering effects of a deadly pandemic to the persistence of political division, economic uncertainty, and various forms of injustice, there are sig­ni­ficant reasons to feel pessimistic, and many Americans do. Polls report increased pessimism among Americans, especially among young people, […]

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” —Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams Until quite recently, discussions of hope in higher education have […]

On May 30, 2023, the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) released a statement signed by dozens of leading researchers and industry executives, warning that AI posed an unprecedented threat to humanity: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”1 The one-sentence […]

I understand the temptation to despair. After decades of working at top business schools and with corporations, I have followed the litany of public scandals, and know the ugly realities that never make headlines. There is reason for cynicism. And yet, every day I do work that is driven by hope, and I continue to […]

The evening following Martin Luther King, Jr.’s murder, my father was trying to drive home through the riots and chaos in Washington, D.C. My dad had been active in the civil rights movement as a college student and was not allowed to walk in his graduation because of his involvement. He graduated anyway and went […]

“The kind of attention we bring to bear on the world changes the nature of the world we attend to . . . ” —Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World There is a scene in a campy film classic where a main character is […]

Pushing Cool Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette by Keith Wailoo I recently read Princeton University historian Keith Wailoo’s Pushing the Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette. I found this book to be a fascinating read. Wailoo makes connections between Eric Garner, George […]

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by […]

I am no linguist, but I love to contemplate language. Language is loaded with meaning. Some cultures have words that encapsulate an important essence, a feeling or value that other cultures have no words for. A fellow clinician was reflecting on how the nature of the presenting complaints changed when he moved to an area […]

Lawyers serve important and challenging roles in any civilized society. For them to fulfill those roles, we need for lawyers to conduct themselves in certain ways, despite pressures and temptations to act otherwise. One way we try to achieve this is through rules, or at least guidelines, for lawyers to follow. After the Watergate scandal […]