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Culture and Society

Why I Didn’t Sign
An amicus brief from Harvard alums avoids addressing the university’s many failings
Obscenity and Free Speech: An Awkward Coexistence
Do you ‘know it when you see it’—and does that matter when it comes to protecting free speech?
 • 
Nathan Goetting
White and Black Album
How much cultural “knowledge” is ignorance and context collapse?
 • 
Addison Del Mastro
Is It Time for End-of-College ‘Board’ Exams?
With AI use rising in higher ed, faculty members need new ways to ensure their students are actually learning
Academic Activism as an Effect of Digital Media
The social media forces of virality have irrevocably changed the nature of academia
 • 
Andrey Mir
Observations From a Wedding
On making your tribe, what Fargo folks are really up to and where the heck the wind came from
 • 
James Lileks
Baby Bonuses Won’t Save America
To solve the problem of declining birth rates, we need a deep cultural renewal, not superficial policy fixes
 • 
John Mac Ghlionn
Informal, Hyperlocal History
History often hides in plain sight–and it’s all around us
 • 
Addison Del Mastro
How To Get Rid of a Tenured Professor
Activists push an apocalyptic vision of climate change, but that's not the scientific consensus. I got in trouble just for saying that
 • 
Roger Pielke Jr.
The Tin Gods Have Failed Us
The failure of secularism, consumerism and hedonism is prompting Americans and others to begin embracing traditional religion
 • 
Jon Gabriel
The Sunset of Screen Satire
Chasing wider audiences darkens and dulls a once wickedly sharp art
 • 
Michael Puttré
Was Shakespeare a Pacifist?
In some of his plays, most notably “Troilus and Cressida,” the Bard makes the case against war
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John Mueller
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