“Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome” by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, 1758 (US-PD-Art). This article is part of a forthcoming series on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The issue of the cultural foundations of the Founding Fathers and of American constitutionalism in general is, perhaps, more apparent than real and, in any case,…
St. Mary’s Academy, Image Courtesy of SNJM Archives. This week, the first of the state of Oregon’s public schools will open their doors to a new school year. Teachers will reenter their classrooms to unfamiliar students, filled with the emotions of the fall’s start. In the next few weeks, the state’s private schools will join…
Photo by Asher Koralik, Dan Hadani collection / National Library of Israel / The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection (CC-BY-4.0) The campaign for the next Israeli Knesset is unfolding in two contexts. One is the shadow of conflict and failure: populist judicial reform that brought hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets from January to October of 2023,…
Why So Many Churches Are Turning To Bankruptcy to Reorganizeby Pamela Foohey The following is an introductory essay to Pamela Foohey’s forthcoming book, Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive (University of Chicago Press, 2026). Foohey’s book will be published on September 21, 2026. I never meant to write a book…
Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants–and Why It Still MattersLloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González This article includes excerpts from Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants—And Why It Still Matters by Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González and published by Oxford University Press in…
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, visited the migrant hotspot in Lampedusam, Italy © European Union, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). I would like to read Elizabeth Shakman Hurd’s Heaven Has a Wall from the perspective of Mediterranean Europe, and more specifically from Italy. My aim is to ask what happens when the…