Tyre Nichols was beaten and killed by officers of the Memphis Police Department earlier this month. I’ve written here about similar killings many times in the past, and each time I do, I know it won’t be the last. This is who we are. I continue to write because I…

I have a confession. I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve become immune to natural disasters. Whether it’s a tornado in the Midwest, flooding along the Mississippi, a hurricane in the Gulf, or even a wildfire in my home state of California, none of these things affect me as…

Reflections on a year of teaching middle school English through a computer screen. — The last time I taught students in my classroom was one year ago today. It was towards the end of second period at 10:40am when my phone vibrated with the news that our school district would be closing for two weeks. Even then we didn’t quite understand how serious the…

Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump was not just about politics. — Let me tell you what this means. On the night of January 29, 2017, just nine days after the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, I looked at an America I no longer recognized. Two days earlier the President had signed Executive Order 13769, better known as the Muslim Ban…

Just for the sake of argument, let’s give President Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt. As we look back at the course of his campaign and presidency, let’s assume for a minute that the President is not a racist. Trump took his first steps on the road to the…

Dear Secretary DeVos, I’m writing in response to your press conference on Wednesday of this week and your suggestion that schools should open at full capacity in the fall. I will avoid commentary on the irony of any member of this administration’s being critical of how public school districts —…

It is not hyperbole to state that we have arrived on the battlefield of a second civil war. While the opposing forces one hundred and sixty years ago were divided as much by geography as ideology, the boundaries of our current conflict, while drawing on unhealed wounds from the actual…