Together We Are Stronger
Dear New School Friends, This time in America poses many challenges for the Commonweal community and for each of us. The first challenge is how we live through this time personally. The second challenge is how we respond to it in our work. And the third challenge is...
Lighting Candles in Dark Times
Writer and speaker Sumbul Ali-Karamali in conversation with TNS Host Irwin Keller Dear New School Friends: Take care of your health -- and the health of those you love. Not only is it the flu season -- but stress lowers immune resistance. Many find this time of...
A Reflection on Our Times
Most commentary on the American presidential election focuses on the qualities of the candidates and recent events in American political history. Pulling back the lens offers a more expansive view. Hegemonic powers have risen and fallen throughout human history. The...
Enneagram: An Archetypal Psychology
I have been studying the Enneagram. Enneagram is an archetypal psychology – “a model of personality which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types,” Wikipedia tells us. Enneagram provides those drawn to it with a tool...
Soul and Polis in Difficult Times
As a general rule, we don't cover politics at The New School. That said, we appear to be at a turning point in political discourse both in the United States and in Europe. The approach I take here is not a partisan one, but rather a reflection on how we balance our...
ISHI Goes Back to Medical School
Below you will find an important announcement from Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal. We celebrate ISHI's new partnership with Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. The...
Francis: The Making of A Radical Pope
People see Pope Francis in different ways. For those concerned with climate change, the environment, poverty and justice, he is an astonishing moral force. For those concerned with gay marriage, abortion rights, making women priests, and child-abuse, he is a...
Eight Years at The New School
Dear New School Friends, Often I write to you about things that interest me -- like my last post on whether beauty will save the world. I rarely write to you about New School conversations. But let's look at seven recent TNS conversations: Actor and Zen teacher Peter...
Will Beauty Save the World?
I was writing you a despairing note about the state of the world when I decided to offset the gloom by quoting Dostoevsky’s beautiful line: “Beauty will save the world.” I Googled the quote to be sure I got it right and found this elegant post: Ravi Bhoraskar,...
Reflections on Eight Years of The New School
I've been looking back on eight years of The New School. When we started in 2007, I thought we'd mostly tape phone conversations. Then it turned out that people liked to hear the conversations live. At first a dozen or so people would turn up. Over eight years, The...
Michael Lerner: Whispers Of A Wounded Healer
These grassroots efforts are like a global immune system in that they are drawn to the wounded places and they begin to work. --Michael Lerner From Awakin Call Transcript, February 2015, and published June 2 on Daily Good. Read the transcript here or listen to the...
What Matters Now? Thoughts on Being Mortal
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End By Atul Gawande, MD This is a book about the modern experience of mortality— about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t. . . . Lacking a coherent...