Iowa is a small state in the rural Midwest that is far off the beaten track from the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

But for the next 80 days, Iowa sits at the epicenter of the American political landscape.

On February 1, Iowa holds its famous caucuses, the...

The media coverage of the terrorist atrocities of Friday November 13 in Paris would seem to promote an almost mythical image of the Islamic State (ISIS). What humanity needs, however, is to demystify ISIS as a criminal organization. And that need is particularly important in my community – the Muslim...

The Islamic State’s (ISIS) horrendous terror attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13, preceded by a retaliatory bomb attack – also attributed to ISIS – last week on a Russian passenger aircraft in the Sinai Peninsula has finally brought together the opposing Western and regional powers in the Syrian conflict.

The Paris...

When in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attacks last January, I wrote a column suggesting that we all had to demonstrate a new toughness.

At that time, I thought the scale of ISIS' attacks on Western targets was contained by its avowed doctrine of territorial...

Our national identity as a welcoming destination for immigrants is being eroded by our fear of undocumented immigrants – fears that are increasingly impacting children.

The fourth GOP debate again revealed the fault lines in the...

During what was otherwise an ordinary diplomatic visit to the United Kingdom at the beginning of November, Egypt’s President Sisi signaled a significant shift in Egyptian domestic policy and regional politics.

After an...

Standing at the South Pole is the next-best thing to being on another planet. If you walk a few hundred yards away from the buildings that make up the National Science Foundation’s research station, you see a featureless plain of snow and ice, most...

Chances are that by the time you enter college in the United States, the closest thing you’ve had to reproductive education was watching an uncomfortable video in health class, maybe even before you went through puberty. It might not have answered your questions and perhaps led...

The smell of cinnamon wafts through the air. My guard is down; resistance is futile. Like a zombie, I roll my luggage across the airport food court and stand in line to pay too much for what I don’t even want, a diet-killing Cinnabon.

I have been phished, at...

Perhaps on the outside looking in, the events at the University of Missouri appear baffling. They’re not.

I taught there from 1996 to 2008. The recent racist incidents and lackadaisical administration response, which sparked the amazing display of student solidarity, is part...