Torture Probe: Who’s Being Protected under the Searing Bright Light?

A reporter recently asked me when activists would consider the struggle to hold torturers accountable to be over. I replied that it wasn’t a matter of whether activists would continue to hold a grudge against... Read More
Nothing Sacred: What We Talk about When We Talk about Torture

The prisoners had their feet shackled to the floor and their hands cuffed close to their chins… Detainees were clad only in diapers and not allowed to feed themselves. A prisoner who started to drift... Read More
If English Was Good Enough for Jesus…

Listening to talk radio is like picking a scab. It’s hard to stop. And why stop? Despite its reputation for offering little more than anonymous plebeian banter, there is often some wisdom to be gleaned... Read More
Rational Sunday School

It’s Sunday morning at a community center in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. A group of children, age four to twelve, form a half circle, their mouths ajar and eyes wide, staring at the man... Read More
OPERATION BABY LIFT: An Adoptee’s Perspective

In April 1975, under the manufactured threat of a mass slaughter of infants and children by advancing North Vietnamese forces, Western relief agencies and orphanages in South Vietnam, and finally the U.S. government, pressed into... Read More
The Humanist Interview with Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and pluralism among religiously diverse young people. He received his doctorate in the... Read More
LOCKDOWN: Are Teens (and Taxpayers) Paying the Price at Christian Reform Schools?

The year was 1986. I was a somewhat normal sixteen-year-old, enjoying the Southern California summer weather, trips to the beach, and preparing to start my junior year of high school in Orange County. However, my... Read More