Why the US-Azerbaijan alliance should be saved.

A graduate student talks to Berliners about the anniversary.

Elections can’t and don’t tell us who will win the next one, no matter how much pundits like to claim otherwise. But elections can be very informative about the state of the nation, and about where the country wants to go.

The brighter side of the not-so-good headlines dominating the news.

A sermon preached on the eve of Yom Kippur by a Conservative rabbi in Seattle makes for some startling reading.

How is it that Russia looped away from the Soviet matrix in the late 1980s, only to recreate so much of it between 1991 and now? The conclusion of a two-part essay. Read part one here.

How is it that Russia looped away from the Soviet matrix in the late 1980s, only to recreate so much of it between 1991 and now? The first of a two-part essay.

Some lessons for today’s public health crises from the storied past of Ellis Island Immigrant Health Hospital.

A crisis-driven foreign policy will inevitably succumb to disorientation and exhaustion. The United States needs a serious discussion about its role in the world—one that matches objectives and means.

As Pope Francis appears to be tacitly approving certain liberalizations in the Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury canceled the upcoming Lambeth Conference due to strong opposition from African clergy to the Anglican Church’s developing attitudes on gay clergy and bishops, same-sex couples, and generally tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality. Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church seeks to “return Europe to its true self”.