Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president.  Hillary Clinton is about a month away from having the same designation on the Democratic side.  Assuming they do secure the nominations, what kind of choice will they present to the voters in the fall? Normally, that question would be relatively easy to answer.  It […]

Questions of ethnic, religious, nationalistic, and cultural identity plague the central character in Ayad Akhtar’s “Disgraced,” which is currently being staged at Capital Stage.  Mr. Akhtar is no apologist for Islamist terrorism, but his play suggests that assimilation in pursuit of the “American dream” may be more difficult when one’s core identity is fixed to […]

The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy.” -Sam Harris In his brilliant attack on religion (“The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason,” W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2004), Sam Harris presents a view of Islam that suggests (if it doesn’t predict) that the […]

As the primary season enters the home stretch, the leading candidates in their respective parties continue to be Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: he the free-wheeling, politically incorrect billionaire who wants “to make America great again”; she the highly credentialed, much maligned, technocrat who seeks to maintain and build on Obama’s accomplishments as the first […]