Knox Scholar: How Lincoln Handled Critics
From: New York Times (New York, NY)
Commentary by Douglas L. Wilson, a professor emeritus at Knox College [and co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College]:
“Today we widely understand that Abraham Lincoln’s use of presidential war powers was indispensible to his success. But one of his biggest problems at the time was convincing the Northern public that suspending habeas corpus and other restraints on civil liberties were both temporary and constitutional, and that their enforcement was necessary to win the war…
“Lincoln emphasized the difference between what is allowable in times of rebellion or invasion that would not be allowable to ordinary times… Lincoln’s way of confronting this crisis tells us a great deal about the man, his unorthodox methods and the success of his presidency…” Read more…
Students and professors at Knox College and residents of Galesburg, IL, have been engaged in food issues for years. Last year saw the introduction of an occasional “Local Burger Night,” created by working with area (grass-fed) beef producers and the dining service director. The effort has seen continued success…
Volkskrant Science Editor Maarten Keulemans explains [translated from the original in Dutch] why so many girls are screaming for boy bands like One Direction: “Evolutionary biologists like Geoffrey Miller (famous for his book The Mating Mind) and David Buss (The Evolution of Human Mating) believe that boy bands are young men showcasing their fitness by dancing and singing, much as male birds attract mates… [Others believe that] for girls at the beginning of puberty, a boy band [allows them] to experiment with romantic love, without sex…
Bollywood’s first-ever zom-com, or zombie comedy, ‘Go Goa Gone’ is all set to hit theatres this weekend [opening May 10 in India]. And [2002 Knox grad] Vir Das revealed that he loved doing improv while shooting ‘Go Goa Gone’.
For many young adults, there is a ‘Fantasy Gap’ between expectations grounded in materialism and a commitment to work ethic, according to “new research by San Diego State University psychologist Dr. Jean M. Twenge [and] Dr. Tim Kasser, a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois.
American poetry has seldom promised a path to fame and fortune. One lively exception was the work of Carl Sandburg, who achieved a celebrity before his death in 1967 that seemed more typical of a Hollywood screen legend or a Hall of Fame athlete… But since his death, Sandburg’s stock has fallen… Along with frequent striving to please the popular culture’s broad middle, a more radical strain of thought provided an alternating impulse in Sandburg’s poetry, sometimes giving his poetry an edge that pushed prevailing social conventions…