Tag: human dignity
The Moral Decline of Elite Universities
In the spring of 1994, the top executives of the seven largest tobacco companies testified under oath before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. Nearly 30 years later, Americans remember their laughable claims, their callous indifference, their lawyerly inability to speak plainly, and the general sense that they did not regard themselves as part of a shared American community. Those pampered executives, behaving with such Olympian detachment, put the pejorative big in Big Tobacco.
Last week, something similar happened. Thirty
The Reinvention of the Catholic Church
In May 2021, a time when public gatherings in England were strictly limited because of the coronavirus pandemic, the British tabloids were caught off guard by a stealth celebrity wedding in London. Westminster Cathedral—the “mother church” of Roman Catholics in England and Wales—was abruptly closed on a Saturday afternoon. Soon the groom and bride arrived: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds, a Catholic and a former Conservative Party press officer with whom he had fathered a child the
Elnathan John on Satire and Cancel Culture
Few observers of global discourse range as widely as Elnathan John, the novelist, satirist, and lawyer who frequently participates online and off in conversations about art, politics, and culture pertaining to at least three continents. His novel, Born on a Tuesday, is a coming-of-age story set in his native Nigeria. In Becoming Nigerian: A Guide, he tried his hand at satire.
Today, John lives in Berlin, where, in addition to writing, he works with academic institutions to foster
Why Millennials Are Obsessed With Dogs
This article was published online on July 29, 2021.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, I have asked one question more than any other. It’s come up time and again, day and night, as frequently in my post-vaccination spring and summer as it did in the dark moments of the pandemic’s first wave: Are you my booboo?
The question is never answered by Midge, my agoraphobic chihuahua, but the answer is obvious. She’s