Education
About the Noise
Based on our data, only 16% of my blog readers live in the Dubuque community. That means my Editorial below, published in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald on Sunday, December 17th, 2017, will probably mean nothing to you. But before you exit the page and go on with your day, I’d...
A Leader’s Responsibility in Public Discourse
I just finished reading an engaging book titled On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Yale University professor, Timothy Snyder. The book isn’t a commentary on either our current President or past Presidents, nor is it a commentary on one political party or the other. Rather, it is...
Charlottesville, et al.
Our campus Chaplain talked to me about a student from California who had inquired whether I was going to issue a statement about Charlottesville. By the time this piece is made public, every one of my readers will know about the events in Charlottesville. They will have read or listened...
A Case for Intellectual Pluralism
Published in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald on June 18th, 2017 I still recall with equal measure of fondness and terror my professor’s green pen. I don’t know what it was with my former professors, but most seemed to write their critiques with green ink. Such was the case with one...
The Beauty of Impracticality
Lynn Dobson started building pipe organs in 1974. As an undergraduate industrial design major, he needed a senior project. His project was to repair a broken pipe organ that had long ago been stuffed away. He dissembled the organ and began to reassemble it in a chicken coup on his...
Freely Speaking
Over the last several months, readers have spoken to me about the topic of free speech. The last election cycle was as much or more polarizing than any other of this generation. Protests after the election, before the inauguration, and during the still young tenure of our new President seem to...
Leadership Through Advocacy: An Interview With Molly Hanson
MORE ABOUT Molly Hanson Molly Hanson is a 30-year old Des Moines native with a passion for the outdoors and conservation in Iowa. She attended Johnston schools and the University of Northern Iowa where she graduated with an Earth Science degree and a minor in Geology. Molly has worked in the...
Character Counts: An Interview With Scott Raecker
MORE ABOUT Scott Raecker Scott Raecker serves as Director of The Robert D. and Billie Ray Center at Drake University (formerly known as Character Counts In Iowa) – a position he has held since the work of the center was founded by former Governor Robert D. Ray as a lasting legacy...
High School Students Can’t Go Wrong With Serving Others
High school seniors, and juniors should be filled with a mixture of anticipation, excitement and anxiety as they think about what lies ahead of them. As they decide which college to attend or job to seek, some students already know which career paths they want to follow and many others...
Moral Leadership Outlook: An Interview With Doug Gross
The first blog post on my site, besides "About My Blog", is titled "Leadership Matters For A Changing World". In it, I quote James Davidson Hunter's book, To Change The World. My new video interview series has taken inspiration from it as, I believe, it deserves much more thought from...
