The newly democratically-elected president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, redefined democracy when he announced a constitutional decree that puts him above the law. Granting himself quasi-divine power and preventing all legal actions against his forthcoming decisions, Morsi explains that his actions are temporary until the constitution is written and the People’s Assembly is formed. This move, … Read more

This spring St. Francis College presented a forum on “the virtues of liberal democracy compared to its Islamic rivals.” Panelists were asked to respond to the argument in Ibn Warraq’s new book, Why the West Is Best. Paul Berman was one of the panelists and here’s a slightly adapted transcript of what he had to … Read more

Typically, a new president of Egypt is sworn in in front of the People’s Assembly (PA). The PA, however, was dissolved by the High Constitutional Court in the run-up to the presidential election. So on June 30 2012, Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president, took his oath in front of the High Constitutional Court. … Read more

Introduction The most famous line of the most famous book of one of the great American public intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth-century defines “the problem” of the coming century as “the problem of the color-line.” The Souls of Black Folk (1903) uses the sentence three times, and may not refer exclusively to … Read more

First is honored (and stoked!) to reprint the following tributes (which originally appeared in a German publisher’s “yearbook”) to two classic ethnographies. The Stones Ethnographers Trip Over By John Chernoff In my first course in cultural anthropology, more than thirty years ago during the heyday of structuralism and functionalism, the first ethnography we students read was … Read more

Walking the Tiger’s Path: A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey Paul Kendel Tendril Press, 2011 “The Tiger’s Path” is the name that the Buddhist teacher Sakyong Mipham gives “the path of discernment” in his book Ruling Your World. “Venturing onto the path of the tiger, we place our paws carefully. We respect karma; we know that every … Read more