Academic Rants

Balanced Reporting             As the year comes to a close it is important to offer some balanced news. After being overseas for over a week, I can agree with President Trump on America’s news coverage. Yes, he is correct in suggesting that it is not good.   Balanced news in America no longer exists.   Networks either criticize or praise the president, and spend a great deal of time speculating on what he will do next.   So to put it politely, the Fox, CNN, and NBC affiliates are engaging in possibilities not actions.   News should be facts, not alternative facts or ideas. The world, in response, has had to develop its own viewpoint of the United States, its people and our nation’s 45 th president. Trump, the man and the Trump presidency, is virtually the sole conversation on America’s major networks.   The rest of the world is invisible under the president’s glowing haze. “America First,” has really meant “America only!”  To an international audience, President Trump ha

Reacting to the Past As the special investigations on Russian interference on the election continue, it appears that Americans remain confused about events and their impact. However, at this point there should not be any degree of doubt.   All of the government agencies have demonstrated that the Russians attacked social media, hacked emails, tried to search through and compromise voting systems and had legal and illegal contact with political campaigns.             In fact, if one wants to translate the prevailing clues it would seem that the Russians courted the Clintons and when ultimately rejected (after some financial transactions) they moved on to the Trump campaign.   It clearly seems like both campaigns are involved in some immoral if not illegal practices. Yet, while this “evidence” is broadcast on the news and newspapers, there is very little activity towards addressing the challenges presented by Russian interference.   And what seems even more astounding is that a

Winds of Change?             Fifty years ago, in 1967, the nation was affected by a series of racial disturbances.   While most people remember the problems in Detroit, New Jersey actually had more than one “riot.”   The largest of these disturbances took place in Newark, the state’s largest city.   Newark has never been the same and neither has New Jersey.   The state has witnessed a great polarization between urban and suburban communities and a new avoidance of the state’s largest cities.   Residential segregation is all but obvious with people of color living in the cities’ core and its oldest suburban rings.   Most white residents live in newer suburban areas or outside of the urbanized zones. The decline of Newark has been explained by numerous sources including a fine historical work by Kevin Mumford and several important documentaries by Jerome and Marylou Bongiorno.   They have depicted the 1967 disturbance as a rebellion, in which a city was at war with itself.   And

Another Day, Another Hot Topic                         There is one thing that continually hampers the Trump administration and as a result hampers the unification of the nation.  President Trump never maintains his stride. When things are going good, they don’t stay good.  He always seems to wander into a hotbed of social controversies where none seem to exist or are not truly offensive.  And the president's behavior takes a negative tone.   One place that a president typically avoids is the world of sports.  Presidents often honor winning teams, go to sporting events, flip the coin, and throw out the first pitch but traditionally leave things alone.   They know Americans love their sports and that sports fans are both Republicans and Democrats.   Voter conscious presidents don’t want to offend potential supporters and they know that the politics of sports should be left to the other branches of government. Yet, the world of sports has never been devoid of politics an