I'm hearing people downplay the Trump tax story, and I know for some people it won't move the needle. But I can think of at least one super-conservative person who would have been affected by it: my Dad. He was conservative in just about every way, and yet ... There was one particular kind of person that he loathed above all others: the greedy corporate executive who cooked the books and swindled workers. He came of age in the era of wage compression, when managers made 10x or 20x what their employees did. And he did labor negotiation.

I got my first ever "push poll" call this week. Decided to see it through because I had time while driving. It was amazing to experience. For a NY State Senate campaign, started innocently for the first 5 minutes, and then the push poll question was unimaginably obvious ... Suddenly the caller said, and this is close to verbatim, "On election day, do you think you'll vote for candidate X who will protect your neighborhood from rioters and looters and always defend the police, or candidate Y who has no agenda besides criticism of Donald Trump?"

I guess you haven't been on a search committee in years? Universities track race of applicants to ensure that, in each case and generally over time, the employer is not discriminating against historically underrepresented groups. Christians simply aren't one of those groups. 1/x

https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/1301870745732210688

In addition, I can think of very few reasons why the religion of an applicant should ever come up in a screening or interview process, unless it's a seminary or div school. And if it does come up, it's likely to come up for those of other religious affiliations, especially 2/x

Came back to campus today at @FordhamNYC to see the changes and offer a friendly masked greeting to arriving students. Here's a quick thread of photos from my first hour back in the Bronx ... (1/13) Before being allowed back on campus, we all had to get tested, and we have to do daily well check-ins through an app.

Please talk me down: How many colleges or universities can survive the financial cliff brought on by our country's foolishness and our federal government's lack of leadership? I'd guess about 10%. No doubt our higher ed culture needed a course correction. But this is a bomb. We've been asking too much of colleges for decades: vocational + liberal arts + educating for democratic citizenship, + most scientific research + housing for thousands + full-scale hospitality management + big-time athletics, often paying high urban rates for all services

In my experience, diverse leadership affects everything for the better —> For my job(s) at Fordham, I am overseen by: two dept assoc chairs, dept chair, Curran center director, undergrad dean, grad dean, and dean of faculty. There is not a straight white man among those 7. It’s a long road, but changing leadership has made real changes to our work that I couldn’t have predicted. No doubt having a woman as the most powerful member of the dept for decades established a tone that created a new culture of expectations for all.

As you may know, I have a solid mix of Catholic and Protestant in my background and present-day life. During quarantine -- and this is not really surprising -- the Protestants are vastly better than the Catholics at home church. With the lone exception of the Pope's deeply moving Urbi et Orbi prayer service, I'm struggling to think of pastoral support from the RCC. I have been asked for money, though.

I just witnessed a deeply disappointing failure of leadership by Catholic priests during Holy Thursday Mass. When it came time for the washing of the feet, the presider noted that, first, technically the Roman Missal doesn’t require this rite, and ... ... second, that “one of us is 88 years old, one is 77, and one is 70. So if we were to try to do this, it would be a pastoral disaster.” My daughter and I were in shock. The congregation was silent. We would have left if I did not love the Pange Lingua so much. ...

No one asked, but my take on @AOC is that she’s demonstrating the power of representative democracy. Her district is more diverse (economic, linguistic, etc.) than almost any region in human history. Unless you’ve inhabited it, the diversity and density is almost unfathomable. In terms of politics, policy, and style of engagement, she’s representative of her district as best she can be, jut like Reps from somewhere like Wyoming have also been of their district (whose whole state contains fewer people than @RepAOC’s district, by the way).

On this 50th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, let me say, though I haven’t read him much lately, I went through a formative five years where I read *everything* I could get. No matter what kind if Christian you are, one of his writings will speak to you. Whether you’re into the traditional Seven Storey Mountain, the mystical Fire Watch, or the radically open Asian Journal, his corpus is really a diverse library of Christian theology and journaling and commentary.

Agree with this thread. And it reminds me of a tweetstorm in March 2016 about this point (which I threaded incorrectly then but will paste now below).

https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1060239240921931776

Thinking tonight about my most transcendent live music experiences and ranked the top five.

5. Radiohead, “Let Down,” MSG, 7/27/16. First and only time. 4. @umphreysmcgee (my friends), “Hajimemashite” during first show headlining Red Rocks (my hometown venue), 7/3/11

RT to win, today only! Release of THE WORLD'S OLDEST CHURCH. 1 lucky RT will win free copy! yalebooks.com/book/978030021… @MichaelPeppard C'mon @EJDionne, I know you want a chance to win a free copy today! But you have to RT the tweet above for your chance!