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...

By now, you’ve surely heard that Americans aren’t getting enough sleep.

In our always-on society, a solid chunk of nightly rest seems, well, like a dream. We shave the edges of sleep to keep up, exchanging extra waking hours for compromised healt...

Talk of “coywolves” – a blend of coyote and wolf – is everywhere. There is a PBS special called Meet the Coywolf, a recent article in the Economist, and it is now trending on Facebook. The media really love this new animal name.

There is no...