Housing insecurity, racism, poverty, the healthy development of young people, social identities, the building of community, our environment – these have all played parts in shaping who I am at 75. I have not just studied these, but I have contributed, protested, taught, and labored to address them. But my relationship to war has lately…

Last week I took a friend and colleague to see a teen program in Chicago. Describing After School Matters as a teen program is a bit like calling Saarinen a builder or Lake Michigan a pond. There are 10,000 Chicago teens in programs this summer, with more participating after school during the fall and spring…

Houses in my neighborhood were built during a pandemic. Federally guaranteed loans were easiest to come by in neighborhoods that were deemed desirable (White middle-class) and most difficult to get in other neighborhoods that were rated as undesirable (Black and poor or working class). Many suburbs like mine had language in land deeds that clarified…

My journey to humanism from religion seems in many ways to be quite linear, even direct. I was baptized within two weeks of my birth and spent the next two decades as a regular adherent to Catholic traditions. From there I went to the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Then, despite…