James Skillen updates the continuing crisis in Darfur, Sudan, drawing on his interview with Dr. Glenn Geelhoed, a surgeon, tropical-disease expert, and medical educator at George Washington University. Geelhoed has taken medical students to almost every country in Africa and has keen insights into life and death in Darfur and beyond.
Steven E. Meyer, a professor at National Defense University and a visiting Fellow at the Center for Public Justice in 2006-2007, raises important questions about American dependence on Pakistan’s president, Perez Musharraf. The Bush administration’s idealism about advancing democracy throughout the world does not square with its actual, realistic practice of supporting the un-democratic leader of Pakistan and the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Now the U.S. is in a bind.
Francis Woehrling served for a decade in Washington at the International Monetary Fund and then for nearly two decades in Brussels as an economist for the European Commission’s monetary directorate. A European from Alsace who married an American and pursued graduate study at Michigan State University, Woehrling offers a unique perspective on where Europe and America are headed today.
Steven E. Meyer, introduced above, is an expert on the Balkan region of Europe. His recent article published in the National Interest online is introduced here by the Public Justice Report’s editor. Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia, has been under UN governance since 1999, when NATO troops defeated Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing operations there. The largely Albanian ethnic population of Kosovo wants independence; Serbia does not want to give up its claim to the province. Diplomatic efforts to overcome the divide are to be completed by December 10. Meyer argues for a way forward.
Guidelines for Government and Citizenship are being published by the Center for Public Justice, and seven of them were introduced in earlier issues of the Public Justice Report. Here is the Center’s guideline on security and defense, the eighth one to be introduced by the Report’s editor. All of the guidelines published thus far are available on the Center’s website, as are Skillen’s introductory essays published in past issues of the Report.
Palos Heights, Illinois, southwest of Chicago, has many churches and a Christian college. In 2000, the city’s Christian mayor, Dean Koldenhoven, was ready to allow Muslims to buy an old church building to establish a mosque. The town council voted him down. But that unusual local battle over religious freedom and the First Amendment has drawn the attention of Harvard University’s Pluralism Project, which has turned the Palos Heights controversy into a case study for its students. Phil Kadner, a local journalist, tells the story.
As we approach the next presidential election, much is getting lost in the sound bytes and candidate posturing. From now until election day, the editor will be holding Conversations on America's Future in towns and halls around the country. Come to one near you or volunteer to host one to help us conclude the celebration of the Center's 30th anniversary.
