Society
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...
Remembering Giants in the Earth
In addition to being a great novel, most scholars agree that the 1927 publication of Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rölvaag marks one of the first painfully honest assessments of the human price paid for the settling of the American West. Giants is a story of Norwegian immigrants...
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...
Empathic Leadership: An Interview With Robert Brownell
MORE ABOUT Robert Brownell Robert Brownell was re-elected in 2016 and is currently serving his fifth term. Supervisor Brownell serves the citizens of Clive, Johnston, Urbandale, Windsor Heights, Grimes, Polk City, Alleman, Elkhart and a portion of Sheldahl that is part of Polk County. Brownell’s experience in government began as a...
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...
The War to End All Wars
One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went to the Capitol to secure support to commit the United States to what became known as World War I. Anyone who visits Washington, D.C. today and tours the historical sites will see a memorial to “The World War,”...
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...
In the End…Hope
I recently witnessed one of the most remarkable refutations of a tragic death. Rev. Scott Hauser, 37, husband to Lara, father to four children ages eleven to one, son, brother, grandson, uncle, friend—and pastor—succumbed to angiosarcoma. Scott and Lara fit more into their fifteen years together than most of us...
