Perspectives
Sanctuaries: A photo tour of Woodlawn’s churches
Churches dot the Woodlawn like freckles and underlie it like foundations. Some of them are historically significant, some have architectural merit, and some stand out only for their typicality. This photo essay includes a little of each. Founded in the second Fort Dearborn in 1833, First Presbyterian Church was a pioneer in the temperance... »
Everything You Know About Communism is Right: What Raymond Lotta got wrong
Across the street from the Lubyanka prison, in Moscow, there stood in 1937 a nondescript building with a specially sloped floor, for drainage, and a wooden wall to muffle the sound of bullets. It was here that the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, executed enemies of the Communist regime. Between 1937 and 1938 this... »
Love Thy Neighbor: In the wake of an attack on the Men’s Cross Country team, it’s time to rethink University-community relations
The University of Chicago is a bastion of resources and privilege in a largely underserved and segregated South Side. The University and many of its students regularly engage in outreach and volunteer programs aimed at bridging the gap between the University community and the broader South Side, and Hyde Park is often hailed as... »
Green Revolution: Low-income communities declare economic independence through agriculture
We talk a lot about urban agriculture at the Chicago Weekly. It’s become an office joke that no issue is a real CW issue without an urban farming piece (spoiler: expect another next week), and even our staff shirts feature a farmer. Some of it is tied to our role as an arts and... »
What’s the Matter with Cable News?: The media’s incivility reaches a fever pitch
Popular opinion has led us to believe that the infection to be worried about this fall is swine flu. Given its generally mild effects, I beg to differ—the real epidemic we should be on guard against is the insidious rise of talking head-itis, easily identifiable by its common symptoms: disregard for evidence, angry invocations... »
Core Values: Taking a stand for liberal education
“To paraphrase Sir Richard Livingstone, ‘The sign of a good university is the number of subjects that it declines to investigate,’” Robert Maynard Hutchins wrote in 1953, 24 years after his tenure as the fifth president of the University of Chicago began. What Hutchins meant was that a proper university should be oriented around... »
Better Living Through Chemistry: What’s wrong with cognitive enhancers?
The most interesting thing about the recent, uniformly skeptical media coverage of Adderall is that the very users journalists interview give the stuff near unanimous endorsement. Even so, the coverage emphasizes minor risks and ignores real benefits. In the slow news month before swine flu, a Fox affiliate trolled the University of Chicago campus... »
Bad Education: Two perspectives on the challenges of teaching in urban schools
I remember it all very clearly. First, the phone conversation with my father. “I’m definitely going to do it,” I told him, elated. “I’m going to be a teacher next year.” There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end. “What do you think?” He gulped audibly. “Well,” he said, “I never thought you’d... »
