With Good Reason

After September 11, 2001 President Bush and his administration were under tremendous pressure to try to prevent another devastating attack, which they believed was imminent. This led to the secret authorization of interrogation methods that many have called torture. Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, and Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate, discuss [...]

This summer, a statue honoring leaders of Virginia’s civil rights movement was dedicated on Capitol Square grounds in Richmond. One of the panels features Oliver W. Hill, an attorney who argued the landmark case of Brown vs. the Board of Education before the Supreme Court. Oliver Hill, Jr. (Virginia State University) shares memories of the [...]

Within seconds of hearing someone speak, we make judgments about that person and background, just based on their accent. Linguistics professor Steven Weinberger ( George Mason University) explains how and when we develop accents and how they affect our identity. Also: Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth century writings may seem impenetrable, with strange pronunciation and incomprehensible phrases [...]

On the 12th of August 1942, Lt. Col. Frank Goettge and 24 Marines under his command landed in the dark on the wrong beach on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and came under withering fire from Japanese soldiers, killing Goettge and 21 of his men.  Sixty-six years later, Cliff and Donna Boyd (Radford University) [...]