Perhaps because the cynicism that dominates contemporary political discourse militates against taking any politician’s words at face value, surprisingly little analysis is devoted to what President Obama actually says in his principal public addresses. Americans are so busy figuring him out, they have stopped hearing him.

Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky, has inadvertently called our attention to a deep contradiction within American conservatism.

It is now nearly forty years since the bishops of the Appalachian region of the United States published This Land Is Home to Me, a historic pastoral letter “on powerlessness in Appalachia.” Two generations later, poverty in Appalachia remains.

Racial differences do not permit disfavoring African Americans in the university admissions process, but the opposite question, whether we may favor African Americans over white applicants, is now a heated question pending in the Supreme Court.

Barack Obama should not be afraid to consider the hopes and expectations of the people who voted for him. But he should also think about the worries of those who voted against him. The two groups have more in common than we (or they) might imagine.

In his impatience with those he accuses of casting themselves as "victims," Mitt Romney misses the real story of government in the lives of most Americans. So often, we combine our own exertions with a little assistance along the way -- the GI Bill, Social Security survivors' benefits, public education -- to become self-sufficient and independent.

Christopher Hayes argues that our highly competitive social and economic system is decaying, turning our elites into an increasingly socially isolated ruling class that passes its privileges on to its often mediocre children. And many of those undeserving heirs fail, causing Americans to lose trust in their leaders. 

Why so few conservatives become professors

What I learned from the Jesuits

A thirtysomething compares the world after Facebook & the world before it.

Behind the jobless recovery

An interview with 2010 Laetare Medalist Dana Gioia

Scholarship inspired by Catholicism bears on real-life issues, not just for the benefit of professors or students, but for everyone, and especially the poor. A Catholic intellectual community does not lead students to decide who they want to be; it helps them discover who they have been called to be.

  Was it wrong to invite the president to deliver the commencement address?

  A full-throated defense of the humanities as food for the soul

  Why did a bishop block a Commonweal contributor from speaking in his diocese?

  The chair of Notre Dame’s History Department on his institution’s oft-questioned religious identity.

Is there room for ROTC on Catholic campuses?

A program for reform.

At Princeton and other elite secular schools, conservative Catholic voices are dominant.

A College President Speaks

Is there any hope in the battle to counter the alarming void in religious education? Yes, argues Notre Dame theologian John Cavadini. But it’s going to take more than "getting back to basics."