Religious fanatics are running amok, committing the most terrible acts imaginable in the name of God.

Nine years ago, on September 11, 2001, while screaming the name of Allah, religious fanatics flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, murdering thousands of innocent people, triggering a radical change in the American character that is only now emerging in its most virulent form.

A people once largely devoted to peace and prosperity, hope and freedom have become a people of war and recession, anger and repression.   With the bitter toxic dust still settling from that long-ago horrific September morning, the thirst for vengeance has spawned a new breed of home-grown religious fanatics, using the name of God as their rallying cry, stirring violent passions as if a battle between competing fanatic factions might save this fractured planet from its increasingly deep moral confusion.

Religious fanaticism is a powerful secular political weapon exploited by those who use extremists to create the conditions that can propel changes in power.   Exploiting people's faith to gain power must be one of those sins for which the third circle of hell was created — the first circle being reserved for those who abuse children, and the second for those who destroy life and hope.

The looming long years of religious warfare are not really about Christians versus Muslims; they are about fanatics and their godfathers versus people of genuine faith.  The struggle pits narcissistic egomaniacs using God as a clever guise against the most fundamental principle of the modern free society:  that peace and justice are possible to achieve even among people of vastly different beliefs and practices and experiences and characteristics.

People raised as true Christians must recognize this principle as central to our faith.  Old Testament prophets prayed to "smite mine enemies" and otherwise get an eye for an eye.  But the New Testament Prophet — the Christ in "Christian" — came preaching a new Gospel:  turn the other cheek and love one another.

No true Christian can possibly advocate violence against people of other faiths without completely betraying the foundation of Christianity in the New Testament.   Anti-Muslim rants have become the new anti-Semitism in 21st Century America, premised on the misguided belief that the September 11 attacks, because they were carried out by radical Islamists, justify expressions of hatred and radical discrimination against all Muslims.  True Christians must speak out against this latest wave of intolerance, as virulent as the Know-Nothing movement of the 19th Century against Catholics.

Threats to burn the Koran — set aside for now — cannot possibly come from anyone who claims to be Christian.

Catholics, in particular, need to remember their own history before joining in the virulent opposition to people of other faiths.   Throughout history, Catholics have suffered egregious persecution at the hands of those who spread lies about the papacy and the meaning of our religious symbols.  The historian Arthur Schlesinger is frequently cited as calling Anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."

Today, it's not hard to find scores of websites devoted to demonizing the pope and the Catholic faith, continuing to spread the centuries-old canards that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, the "Whore of Babylon", or that the Vatican is a violent conspiracy out to take over the world.   Essays mocking the Eucharist, Mary and other sacraments, saints and traditions abound.

Catholics might say this is all preposterous!

Indeed, but no more preposterous than saying that all of Islam is a violent conspiracy to take over the world.

People of other faiths have also suffered grave discrimination, perhaps none so infamous and horrible as the Holocaust, the still-unfathomable extermination of Jews carried out by people who largely considered themselves Christians.  But, of course, they were not.

History is littered with the bodies of people murdered, maimed, imprisoned and oppressed by other people acting in the name of God.   But they are not acting as people of true faith.

What hath God wrought?  People of faith need to stand up and speak the truth.   In this historic moment, silence become complicity with the evil of hatred and bigotry.  We need religious leaders of this moment to call congregations to acts of real faith, new hope, and most of all, sustainable charity.   We need authentic leaders, not media hounds whose real purpose is self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment.

Religion counts.  It's time for religious leaders to take faith back from the fanatics.

Read Nicholas Kristof, America's History of Fear

Read Gail Collins, The 5 percent doctrine

See President Obama on religious tolerance

See General Petraeus on the Quran Burning issue

Goodbye to August, the maddest month of the year.  Long days with hot air breezes.  Takes me back to the times when we kids would clamor to go to the amusement park, maybe the cheezy big one on the Wildwood boardwalk, or that decrepit old one back in the woods along a Pennsylvania country road.  We couldn't wait to go to the funhouse, that scary dark place where we'd get on a rickety car on rails and find ourselves transported into a long, twisty darkness full of distortions that were, at once, utterly frightening and completely fascinating, smelling of old sewers, stale peanuts, popcorn and kids' fear.

This August felt like a ride through the old funhouse.

Clicketyclakclicketyclakcliketclakclikclk… is your seat belt fastened?

Clakclakclakbumpgrindclackwhoooosshhh…..

AAAAaaaaarrrgggghhhhhh!  What's that, a bat? No!  A Beck!

Faces flashing on the screens, eyes wide open, mouths agape, headsets screaming…

Reclaim, restore, renew, revise…

Beckbeckbekbeepbeepbeepedybeepbec….

America has wandered in the darkness….til flashing laser eyes light up the tunnel…show us the way! where are we going?  how did we get here??

Clakclicketyclakclikclak..

Huge glasses shining in the echochamber, what's she saying? Caribou Barbie channeling Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Reclaiming civil rights?  Down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass where nothing is as it seems…

Clicketyclackcliketyclakclicclicclic

Reload, Sarah!

cliketyclaketycloketycluelessaiiieeeee…..

Yikes!  Something moved in that corner, over there!

A mosque!  A mosque!

To arms!  To arms!  To twitter!  To blogs!

clicketyclackthumpwumpaaarrgghhhhsssssshusshhhh…

Glenn screams, Accept God!

But not in a mosque!

Do not defile sacred space!

But proclaim MYSELF from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial!

Walt Whitman pops out of the darkness:  I celebrate myself and sing myself…

clikcetyclakakakakakakclackwhoa! WHOA!

In the corner!  Flames leap up, tri-cornered hats, red white and blue, reclaim the revolution! Burn the constitution! Or only the 14th Amendment?

Save the Second Amendment!  Keep my musket free!

Freedom of religion for the religions we decree!

screechingyellingshoutinghelphelphelphelp…..

Blago almost exonerated, Roger indicted,

Tiger divorced, Strasburg undone…

A city turns its lonely eyes to… Donovan McNabb!

Hail to the Redskins. Aaaaiiiieeeeeeeeeeee…….

cliketyclaketywhooshwhooshscrapescreechSTOP….

Whew, that was pretty scary, almost lost our brakes!

The August funhouse ride grinds to a halt.

Move on, kids, summer's over.

The funhouse is closed.

Time for the grownups to reclaim the stage.

(Seriously, I did consider writing something more erudite about all of this, but the mind boggles and words fail in the face of each day's increasingly bizarre news…)

To see more serious commentaries on these topics, consider reading:

Eugene Robinson, Beck Can't Mar King's Legacy

Dana Milbank, Religious Intolerance Then and Now

Frank Rich, The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

Paul Krugman, It's Witch Hunt Season

Kathleen Parker, My Name is Glenn Beck and I Need Help

Speaking of politics, how about the Fenty-Gray race?  See On Success

Follow me on Twitter @TrinityPrez

For quite some time there's been murmuring about girls getting too many advantages.  Echoing mostly from the caves of misogyny, though sometimes threaded with claims of learned research (ah, "data!"), the party line says that out-of-control feminism duped schools into believing that girls suffered unequal opportunity.  "Look!" say the sociological revisionists, "We've got Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton and Meg Whitman; 3 women Supremes and Oprah calls the shots.  The Revolution is OVER!"

Not so fast.  For some girls and women in the United States today, the women's revolution has been, indeed, a great success story.  But for millions more, real equality of opportunity remains a distant concept belied by the grim facts of their daily lives.   The most obvious fault line of the women's revolution falls along lines of race and social class.

As is my usual August habit, I've spent a good deal of time in recent weeks reading the application essays of the students who have recently enrolled in Trinity's women's college, the College of Arts and Sciences.   These students are mostly teenage girls, 17 or 18 or 19 years old, on the cusp of adulthood but living adult lives already in so many ways.   Most live in the city or nearby suburbs, attended the DC or PG public schools, and have experienced the plagues of poverty and violence in those tragic parts of our region that languish outside of the view of motorcades and tour buses.  For most of these students, single parents — usually mothers — are normal, and grandparents also play a large role in their lives.   Many are mothers, themselves.  The majority are African American and Latina, with many immigrant stories from African and Central American nations.

Words and phrases from the applications of teenage girls dreaming of college in America 2010:

I am homeless…

I was born addicted to drugs…

My father was incarcerated…

At my school, I witness violence every day…

My mother was shot in front of my face…

I was shot…

I have friends who were murdered by their peers…

My baby has hydrocephalus…

My mom was a teen parent…

No one expected much from me…

These are not "coeds" from some "Gidget Goes to College" fantasy.  These are real American girls, the young women who might not have figured prominently in anyone's success story about the women's revolution — but for their ability to enroll at Trinity and colleges like Trinity that have sustained one of the most challenging missions in all of higher education, the mission to educate women who have been excluded from equal opportunity — particularly, the educational opportunity that results in economic advantage.  These young women are now on the road to success, but what a journey it's been!

Denial of equal educational opportunity comes in many guises in this age when coeducation is normal and single-gender education is unusual.   Take this example:  "Back in the day" the advocates for gender equity in education targeted actual gender-based barriers to the participation of women and girls, and won an important legal victory.

Title IX, the law that forced equal opportunities for females in education, is only 38 years old.   But Title IX enforcement languishes in many urban school systems where ensuring that girls have as much opportunity to play soccer as boys have to play football falls by the wayside for superintendents more concerned with budget cuts and union disputes and compliance with other federal mandates.   But unequal opportunity to play field sports — just one of many examples of the failure of Title IX in public schools — has a devastating impact on diminished opportunities for girls in too many public school systems to earn athletic scholarships for college.

The unequal enforcement of Title IX allows economic as well as gender discrimination to continue to repress opportunities for girls from low income families.  I have many powerful women friends who boast to me of their daughters going to prestigious Ivy League universities on soccer or lacrosse scholarships — these are families who could well afford the tuition.   Meanwhile, the girls in the DC Public Schools, for example, have few if any opportunities to play soccer or lacrosse, hence, no opportunities to earn those same scholarships.

But denial of equal educational opportunity — and equal economic opportunity — for young women goes well beyond Title IX examples.   Too many girls in our urban neighborhoods wind up stopping out of high school for pregnancy; too many have family responsibilities that might include caring for siblings because of absent parents.  Too many work full-time in low-wage jobs to support themselves at ages 16 and 17 and 18, with the result that they do poorly in school and are discouraged from high school completion, let alone college access.  Too many suffer protracted neglect of serious mental and physical health issues.

But all is not tragedy.  For these young women who are so old already, their presence here at Trinity is already a triumph of hope over despair, of motivation over discouragement.

There are other words and phrases in their essays, the kind of thoughts that make the faculty and staff here so energized and determined to see these students through to graduation:

I have a dream to succeed…

I will be the first in my family to go to college…

I have to give my son the life I didn't have…

I will not be another negative statistic…

I hope to change the ideas people have about young Latinas…

I want to show my siblings that there is more to life than the streets…

I want to be that person who inspires young ones…

I have a dream to succeed…

I am my daughter's role model…

It is up to me to be the leader of my own life…

I will be the first in my family to go to college…

Our entire purpose at Trinity is to make sure that our students have the knowledge and skills, competencies and values they must have to make these dreams a reality.   At Trinity, we know that the women's revolution is far from over, but we celebrate the courage and vision of our students who have taken up the cause of success not only for themselves but for their children and families.

See my Convocation Remarks with new student essay excerpts

See Orientation news

Happy Anniversary, ladies!  Today is the 90th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.   Yes, it's only been 90 years — within the lifetime of our mothers and grandmothers — that women became fully enfranchised citizens.  And if you think that the rights of women are secure and unchangeable now in this nation, you are not paying attention.

Turning back the clock is a common theme in certain quarters today.  Among the rants, screeds, diatribes and generally ignorant cacophony that passes for political discourse in too many corners of the Internet, talk radio and cable TV these days, a careful listener can hear a worrisome thread in all of the hate talk:  too many 'rights' have been given to people who we don't like, and it's time to roll back the clock to the 'good old days' of some mythological America where 'rights' belonged to the 'right' people.   Read:  white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male.  The haters would have you believe that the United States was a far better place when one demographic ruled the roost and everyone else knew their place.

It's not just the rightwingnuts in their bunkers broadcasting their belief that we were much better when women stayed in the kitchen, Blacks in the fields, and Latinos south of the border.   Some eminently rational thinkers warn that we may have gone too far.   Just yesterday, I heard a a professor from the University of Maryland on WTOP.  He was commenting on the news that China has passed Japan as the world's second largest economy.   In the midst of the interview, in response to the host's sadly superficial question about whether America's 'time has passed, like the Roman Empire,' the business professor said that "what ails America" is that "we have become obsessed with social justice, …race and gender" and that our concern about equal opportunity is diminishing the nation's ability to be competitive.

So, girls — we are the problem, still!  Our quest for simple justice has made the United States less competitive.  Huh??  This dyspeptic view of human rights flies in the face of any real understanding of modern history and demographics.   In fact, the promotion of women's rights and civil rights has revitalized the workforce and made it possible for this nation to grow into the largest and most diverse community and economy in history.

While no one may be suggesting that women should lose the right to vote after all these years, the inclination to foment conflict by pitting people against each other is pernicious.   This nation needs to be big enough and smart enough to continue its forward progress on women's rights and civil rights.   We need to insist that justice is non-negotiable, and that the Bill of Rights is not optional.    Let's stop the rhetoric about how certain kinds of people are the problem, and instead, focus on how to make every person economically secure and productive.

What do you think?  Share your comments by clicking on 'comment' below…

Follow me on Twitter @TrinityPrez

Check out today's "On success" blog:  That Jet Blue Flight Attendant — Hero or Boor?

If we banned the building of churches for every religion that suffered some followers who became murderous fanatics in the name of God, we'd have few steeples in America.   The Gothic spires of many Christian and Catholic churches might never have dominated cityscapes, what with the history of blood-stained religious causes from the Crusades to the burning of witches to the terrorism perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army.  Temples and synagogues might never have opened had the terrorist acts perpetrated by some Jewish extremists been attributed to the entire body of believers.

Indeed, throughout the history of civilization, religion has fueled some of the most heinous acts known to humanity.   We can never forget that the Holocaust's leaders were supposedly good Christians and Catholics.   Sixty-five years after the end of World War II, we're still hard at work on the difficult task of developing a sustainable Christian-Catholic-Jewish dialogue.

Now comes the issue of the "mosque at Ground Zero." A little background:  well before September 11, 2001, plans for the Cordoba Center (the name of the project) were underway.  As some commentators have pointed out, the center is neither a mosque nor is it actually at Ground Zero. The project is an Islamic Center designed to welcome people of all faiths, intended to promote inter-faith dialogue and harmony; the location is an old Burlington Coat Factory.

But like all matters involving religion, politics and the overheated blog-o-sphere, the Ground Zero Mosque Debate has exploded into yet another loud shouting match over whose rights are more important.  Religious freedom, Muslims versus Christians, the feelings of the 9/11 families, America versus Infidels, Sarah Palin versus Michael Bloomberg, Newt Gingrich versus Barack Obama, etc etc etc……  It's ugly out there.

Whatever happened to the religious virtues of forgiveness, tolerance, charity and hope?

President Obama strongly endorsed the right of Muslims to practice their faith at a Ramadan dinner the other night (you can see the video of his remarks here).   But then he backpeddaled the next day, saying he was not commenting on the appropriateness of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

New York Mayor Bloomberg has been adamant in his support for the project, but the Anti-Defamation League opposed it on the grounds that the Cordoba Center would cause anguish for the 9/11 families whose feelings should take precedence over the exercise of religious freedom.  Sarah Palin added to her legend of mangled syntax when she tweeted, "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate"

Opponents of the Islamic Center have been quick to point out that they are not seeking to trample the religious rights of Muslims, but rather, asking the planners to respect the feelings of New Yorkers, especially the 9/11 families who suffered so grievously as a result of the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Asking for sensitivity is one thing; spreading anti-Muslim hatred is quite another.   In the monumental clashes of rights that play out all the time in this nation, we run the risk of creating a permanent state of religious/racial/ethnic conflict if we don't find a way to lower the volume and temperature of our advocacy.

Al Qaeda, not the Islamic religion, attacked America on September 11.  9/11 was an awful horror, murder on a grand scale.  But Muslims gathered in a New York mosque are no more responsible for the 9/11 murders than Catholics gathered at St. Patrick's Cathedral are responsible for the murders perpetrated in Belfast for years by the I.R.A.   Sure, individuals in either group may have contributed money or other support to the terrorists, but the crimes of individuals cannot be a reason to hold entire groups of people hostage to our national anger.   (We tried that during World War II with the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, another moment of national bigotry that eventually led to reparations legislation in 1988 and a formal apology by President Ronald Reagan.)

Religious oppression was a major force that drove the earliest American settlers from England and other places in Europe to the shores of this new nation in the 17th and 18th centuries.   The desire to believe as one wishes, to worship without fear, to live in a free community that respects the diverse choices of its members fueled the American Revolution.   Most of us would be unable to live peacefully in this nation today if our ancestors had not fought for the enduring rights and freedoms we now enjoy.

Unfortunately, America in 2010 seems to be a place where many heirs of those rights and freedoms want to constrain, repress and even overturn the liberties accorded to those who do not look like the majority, who do not worship the same way, who speak with accents, whose skin color is not fair.   Those who advocate for less freedom for some claim that they are doing so in the name of security — whether raising the barrier higher in Arizona or stripping birthright citizenship from babies born here or blocking a mosque at Ground Zero.

In fact, far from making our nation more secure, this xenophobia is making this nation a place of significantly greater conflict with the spectre of real oppression not far off the screen.

Diminishing the rights of some people will not enhance the rights of all.  In fact, quite the contrary.  When we tolerate bigotry and oppression against some groups, we open the door to retrenchment of all of the hard-won rights of the last two centuries.

Catholics were once among the most reviled of all religious groups in this nation; our own history demands that we stand in solidarity with people of all faiths insisting on the free exercise of religion.   We might also remind our fellow citizens that forgiveness, not vengeance, is one of the supreme virtues of our faith.  The Ground Zero debate needs more virtue and less violence.

See Michael Gerson, "Obama's mosque duty"

See New York Times editorial

See Eugene Robinson column

What do you think?  Weigh in on the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate by offering your comment… click 'comments' below…

Follow me on Twitter @TrinityPrez

Stay in touch with my "On Success" blog on the washingtonpost.com

Christopher Columbus did not go through Ellis Island in 1492.  He came right across the southern border.

Refugees from the oppressive monarch in Britain — otherwise known as Pilgrims — who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 did not register with the INS.

Africans dragged to these shores in chains did not get documents to prove their lineage.

Surely among the suffering hordes of Irishmen fleeing the potato famine in the late 19th century were at least a few lads who may not have completed all of their paperwork before settling into tenements on the lower East side, cadging whatever jobs they could, surviving appalling conditions while creating increasingly large families who, two or three generations later, are among the wealthiest and most powerful ethnic groups in this nation — but most Irish Americans do not think of themselves as "ethnic" except on a certain day in March.

Unless we are Native Americans, most of us are the heirs of immigrants to the United States.   Our parents or grandparents or great-grands became U.S. citizens perhaps through naturalization, but more likely through the happy coincidence of birth on these shores.   Whether their parents were fully documented immigrants may be an interesting research question.

The current controversy over illegal immigration, raging now in Arizona but simmering in many other states including Virginia, has an overarching tone of righteousness on the part of people who might want to check their own pedigrees.   American citizens of European ethnic descent need to remember their own roots and be more large-hearted and generous toward those brother and sister human beings who often risk everything for the still-vibrant American Dream.   Those citizens whose own ancestors risked everything to get on those boats, survived the perilous passages eke out meagre livings through the first generation do this nation no service by denying other human beings the right to live here peacefully and safely.

The latest amnesia suffered by the heirs of previous immigrant generations is the movement afoot to revoke the Constitutional right of citizenship for people born in the United States.   Last night on television I heard Senator Lindsay Graham assert his view that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which extends birthright citizenship, should be repealed.   He has said, "Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake…We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child's automatically not a citizen….People come here to have babies…They come here to drop a child. It's called "drop and leave. To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child's automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons."

Now, mind you, this is the same Senator Graham whose defense of the Second Amendment right to guns went so far as to say that any effort to limit gun ownership, including prohibitions on terrorists and criminals owning guns, would be unconstitutional.

Selective interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is an American sport, to be sure, but a dangerous tendency among those who take oaths to uphold the Constitution.

Washington Post Columnist E.J. Dionne has an excellent commentary on the birthright citizenship issue in today's paper.   He points out the inconsistency in the philosophy of lawmakers and others who also vigorously defend pro-life positions while wanting to strip babies of fundamental rights because their parents do not have citizenship documents.

Is immigration a mess?  Yes.   Should we allow people to be here who furtively come across our borders?  That's not the right question.  "Furtively" becomes a necessity for some because the policies and procedures currently in place for legal immigration are ineffective.   Yes, of course, people who want to be in this nation should follow the laws.   But when the laws are broken, people make other choices in order to be able to live.

We who are the heirs of the great diasporas of prior generations should approach the need for immigration reform with our values in the right place.   The most important value is to treat all human beings with respect and decency.   Surely there is a way to achieve state and federal goals for the regulation of immigration without degrading the humanity of the human lives at stake.   And, with human respect as the basic premise, surely no legal policy should strip constitutional rights from babies.

I don't know about you, but the thought of $100 million is almost incomprehensible.  When I hear big dollar figures like that, I try to figure out what that kind of money could buy.   $100 million would fund about five years of Trinity's operating budget.   That kind of money would pay for BOTH the renovation of Main Hall AND our new academic center.  An endowment of $100 million would produce enough in annual scholarships to support about 170 full tuition-room-board scholarships.

Albert Haynesworth should be ashamed.  He should take some of that $100 million that Danny Snyder has agreed to pay him and establish scholarships here at Trinity for women who know how to work hard and live up to their responsibilities.

In case you've been distracted by Chelsea's wedding (I wasn't invited, either), Haynesworth is the Redskin player who has a contract worth $100 million.   He must have skipped math class in college (Tennessee, you need to do better!) or else he might understand the value of a dollar, let alone one hundred million of them.

But Haynesworth doesn't seem to think it's important to live up to the promise he made when he signed the contract.   He refused to participate in the early summer conditioning mini-camp, and now he's shown up at the Redskings training camp completely out of shape and unable to complete running tests. A football player who thinks he's too special to follow training and conditioning regimens will soon be an ex-football player.  But he'll still be very, very rich in retirement.

In the last few years, it's become fashionable for an assortment of reporters and legislators to huff and puff and decry various compensation arrangements for corporate CEOs and college presidents, in particular.   While a few of those are completely outrageous, agreed, I am mystified about the silence of the Charles Grassleys of the world on the topic of compensation for professional athletes.   Surely, if we're going to right-size American life according to someone's puritanical tastes, we should also include the $100 million packages that go to people whose main talent is tossing balls, tackling opponents, and occasionally stomping on their heads.

Kids:  don't pay attention to Albert Haynesworth.  Do your homework.  Follow the rules.  Respect your teachers.  Show up for every single practice and play as hard as you can.  You may never make $100 million, but you will be able to sleep well at night knowing that you've always done your best.

What do you think of the Redskins' chances this season?  Click on "comments" below and sound off!

Check out the latest "On Success" at the washingtonpost.com

Follow me on Twitter @TrinityPrez

Congratulations are in order for the District of Columbia in securing a place among the finalists for the "Race to the Top" grant competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.   The fact that D.C. made it into the final group along with 18 states is significant.  With a long history of struggles over school reform, coupled with the more recent highly aggressive plans and steps taken by Chancellor Michelle Rhee, the news of D.C.'s inclusion among the finalists may well signal a turning point for a school system that has long held a secure spot at the bottom of any educational list.

At the same time, more vocal critics are emerging with warnings that the Obama Administration's plans for school reform, including the Race to the Top competition, may well have the effect of causing further harm to the children who need school reform the most:  low income urban students in under-performing schools.

In her blog on the Washington Post website, education reporter Valerie Strauss today provided a good summary of the issues.   A distinguished group of civil rights organizations issued a paper on Monday that spells out the major problems with the Race to the Top and the Obama Administration's approach to school reform.    The gist of the report is that by providing massive funding to states on a competitive basis according to the rules established by the U.S. Department of Education, the administration is creating an unequal system of funding that will have a disproportionately harmful effect on African American and Hispanic children in low income neighborhoods.  Other critics have pointed out that the program emphasizes high stakes standardized testing at the expense of genuinely innovative and effective teaching.

Some political forecasts say that Obama's Blueprint for Reform, including the revision of No Child Left Behind, the education law originally passed in the Bush administration, is also stalled in Congress, and that the Obama plan for changes to this law will stagnate.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan clearly disagrees with the critics and has forcefully promoted the Administration's plans to improve public schools.   In speeches and interviews this week, Secretary Duncan has pointed out that significant changes have already occured in the finalist jurisdictions since they had to take certain actions in order to apply for the Race to the Top grants.  President Obama will speak to the Urban League convention this week about the status of his plans for educational reform.

So much has been said and written on the topic of school reform that we might wonder why we're not there yet, after all these years.  Theories abound, fingers are pointed, roundtables and town halls occur, and Johnny still ain't readin' and writin' too good.

Here's all I know as a consumer of the results of K-12 education:  too many students enter college with large gaps in their educational backgrounds.   From basic reading skills to competent writing to simple arithmetic — let alone a robust framework in history and geography and literature and science and social studies — too many students do not have the sound foundation of knowledge and skills necessary to move to the next level.  These gaps cause the students to fail in college, absent a great deal of remediation, and then the colleges are called to task for having poor graduation rates when, in fact, the students may not have been ready to leave high shool.

To fix this problem, colleges are devoting massive amounts of resources to the educational lessons that students should have learned previously.   At a time when higher education is under the gun to control costs, the idea that we have to pay again for what the taxpayers already thought they paid for in K-12 education is maddening.

I must point out that the preparatory gaps are not just a D.C. problem, or an urban school problem, or a low income student problem, or a problem among students with certain demographics.   The preparatory gaps cut across race, social class, urban/suburban and even some public/private lines.

To begin to address some of this preparatory gap, this year a number of school districts — D.C. included — have adopted the Common Core Standards developed by governors and educators.  The leading higher education associations endorsed and welcomed these standards.    The goals of this effort are worthy; whether adoption of the standards will result in more students entering college with better preparation remains to be seen.

Some people ask me why Trinity or any college accepts students who may not be quite ready for the collegiate curriculum.   My answer is very clear:  if we don't educate the students who come to us, who will?  We have a profound obligation to educate every student who comes to us to ensure that she can develop into the intellectual person lurking within her very being.   We should not turn her away, rather, we must find a way to unlock her potential.

As a university founded with a special commitment to women, we know that unlocking the intellectual potential of women has a profound impact on the long-term success of their children and families.  Women continue to be the primary teachers of the young, and the more educated the mother, the higher the child's ultimate level of educational attainment.

Trinity was also founded by a group of Catholic religious women, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who still have this radical idea about the transformation of individuals through education as a spiritual matter, not simply the secular intellectual side.   More than 200 years ago, the commitment of St. Julie Billiart, the founder of the SNDs, to the Gospel imperative of social justice led her to establish schools for poor girls orphaned by the French Revolution.   That justice imperative galvanized Trinity's founders a century ago to create a college for women who, at that time, had no access to higher education in the nation's capital.   Trinity continues that original idea to be a place of access for women (and now including men in our professional and graduate programs) who might not otherwise have been able to go to college.

There's no "race to the top" money for universities like Trinity who spend considerable time and resources on closing the gap that should never have occurred in the first place.   We serve our students well as a matter of mission while also insisting that our partners at the K-12 level really must do their part to improve collegiate preparation.

So, who wins the Race To The Top, and should we care?  To the extent that this or any federal program makes it possible for more students to learn at higher levels, and, hence to enroll in college with a greater chance of more immediate success, then the students win.   This competition should not be about Delaware or California or Arizona or Pennsylvania or the District of Columbia.   This competition should be about leveling the playing fields so that every student in the race has an equal chance to make it to the top.

Secretary Duncan has said, frequently and rightly, that improving educational opportunities for all children is THE civil rights issue of our time.  I agree wholeheartedly.   If he truly believes that statement, however, then he needs to make sure that in the race to the top, millions of children are not left behind because the process of incentivization only rewards those who know how to run the race.

One of the greatest educational threats to American society today is NOT that this nation is failing to produce enough mathematicians and computer scientists, though that is certainly an economic problem, nor is it the catastrophe of failing urban public schools, though that is a scandal and a tragedy of grave proportions.   No, the greatest educational threat today is that people who are already well educated are acting like ignorant Neanderthals, abandoning the most fundamental principles of liberal education — "liberal" in the true academic sense of the large perspectives of the liberal arts, not as a political word (yet) — in favor of the most narrow-minded anti-intellectual hate-stirring race-baiting views of the polity and community life.

Exhibit A:  Andrew Breitbart.   Raised in Brentwood, a wealthy neighborhood of Los Angeles where the Hollywood stars and moguls live.   Supposedly educated at Tulane, one of the most elite research universities in the country.   Must have skipped a lot of classes.  One of that small fraternity of right-wing Internet wags who manufacture headlines designed to foment social division and political turmoil.   Truth is optional in this universe.  Sophisticated intellectual frameworks and broad-minded views of human life need not apply.

Breitbart is the source of the Shirley Sherrod controversy.   But the political arsonist knew exactly the tinder he was sparking.  The Obama Administration, terrified lest anyone think that the president might actually favor or promote Black causes, responded to Shirley Sherrod's allegedly racist comments with a speed we have not seen recently.  Would that the administration had responded to the BP oil well explosion as quickly and decisively.   Heedless of any normal rules for treating employees fairly, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack fired Sherrod based apparently on what Andrew Breitbart and other wingers said about her speech.   (Everyone has apologized to Sherrod since this started, but still….)

Problem being that the speech was nothing like the Breitbart report.   And, here's where the ultimate value of the liberal arts education that should be coursing through the veins of these well-educated journalists and politicians alike has failed miserably.

Watch the Sherrod video in its entirety. Anyone who has taken a college course in literature or rhetoric or sociology or anthropology or history or economics or politics or even theology in the last half century would surely understand how to deconstruct the speech.   All of literature is about the stories of human cultures, told through the voices and vocabularies and vernaculars of the poets and storytellers and writers and journalists and essayists of each age.   History is never completely objective; history is the story of the society told in the voices of those who lived in the times, perhaps bleached through generations of research and revision, but nevertheless, the source documents resonate the truth of the original voices.   This is the reason why, in higher education, we insist on research into the original documents, to remove the filters of interpretation that obscure the truth.  You have to read the WHOLE document, watch the WHOLE video, not just the part you like, the part that suits your narrow view of the world.

Shirley Sherrod told her story in a vernacular that was moving and powerful.   She told the truth about her experience as a young girl growing up on a farm in the rural South in the first half of the 20th Century.  She talked lovingly of her father and his dreams for his family — before he was murdered by a white man who was never punished for the crime.   She was honest about her initial skepticism of the white farmer.   (Find me a white person who has truly never had similarly dim views of at least one black person — please!  Let's be real.)  She got over her initial skepticism when she realized that Farmer Spooner, too, was victimized by the power structure — the economic powers.

Sherrod was not afraid to use the labels like "white" and "black" that make so many people cringe, and "rich and poor" and "have and have not."   She had to use the labels to tell the story faithfully.   We can hardly tell the story of the United States without using racial labels, but some revisionists would prefer that we not mention those untidy facts — like slavery, like poverty, like lynchings, like Jim Crow laws, like discrimination, like failing public schools, like what's said behind closed doors.

But Sherrod was not telling a story of victimization, hatred or division.  In fact, her primary message was quite clear:  first, that the primary divisions in American society are economic and social class, not race; and, second, that the Black community must seize the moment to make changes that will ensure a better future for the rising generations.   She was actually quite blunt and powerful in challenging the young people of the Black community to reach higher and insist on excellence.   Her message was one of hope, with a vision for the future of all people of all races coming together to build the community.   Echoes of Martin Luther King, Jr.

You might disagree with her, you might have a different story to tell, but clearly, her voice was honest and authentic.

Students who paid attention in their college years might hear in her words echoes of the literature of poverty and oppression, hope and redemption — echoes that can be found in all great works from Plato to Shakespeare to Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to John Steinbeck and Edwige Danticat and Khaled Hosseini and Azar Nafisi.   A student of theology would recognize the language of the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church, even the encyclicals of Pope John Paul II, in Sherrod's heartfelt description of her realization that the real problem in our society is the gap between rich and poor.

A truly liberally educated person, upon hearing Sherrod's story, would say, "My goodness, what a tremendous tale of courage, of triumph over hardship, of self-discovery and personal change."   A pseudo journalist interested only in making his own headlines and fomenting hatred would take a snippet from her speech and cry,"Racist."

A liberal education does open the mind of the reader and listener to the possibility that the voice of the speaker or writer will be illuminating and even persuasive, changing the mind of the listener by broadening perspective.

Right-wingers (not conservatives, we'll get to that in a minute) decry the "liberal" tendencies of American higher education.   Why anyone is surprised that the study of the liberal arts makes people more broad-minded escapes me.   In fact, the whole point of a "liberal" education — meaning the study of the liberal arts — is to enlarge the person's intellectual capacity, to "liberate" the mind to pursue knowledge through study and inquiry, to learn how to conduct a disciplined research into any topic, to know and to appreciate the breadth of human experience, to question convention, to invent solutions, to understand the moral parameters of life, to ponder the great philosophical questions not the least of which is why some people like to spread hate.   A "liberal" education is not about partisan politics but a wholistic view of life that is the opposite of narrow-minded ignorance.

To be a "liberal" in political terms has become a bad idea today, so much so that liberals have embraced the term "progressive," which also has problems.   To be a "conservative" in political terms today is to be associated with extremists whose views bear little relation to real conservatism.

Real conservatism prefers limited government, relatively unrestrained capitalism, and respect for traditional institutions.   Real liberalism advocates equal justice and human rights, fostering social change to achieve those goals.   Moderates in the middle reflect values of each ideology, and most Americans are somewhere in the middle.

Unfortunately, the provocateurs of the Internet age eschew any meaningful relationship to true ideology, liberal or conservative, in favor of the mindless pitting of people with different interests against each other.   Sadly, our political leaders give entirely too much credence to these inflammatory extremists, thereby failing to provide the thoughtful leadership on difficult issues that the people truly crave.

President Obama is one of the most thoughtful, intellectual presidents we've ever had.  But he's surrounded by political operatives who repress his ability to exert true leadership on tough topics like race because they are afraid that he will be perceived as "too Black" or "too liberal."   Well, heck.  He needs to be himself.   He needs to liberate himself from those advisors who are making him plain vanilla.  That's not what the voters ordered in 2008, and not what they want now.

Perhaps Obama needs to surround himself again with a buncha good old fashioned liberals — those who really believe in the liberal arts as an organizing framework for understanding human life.   He might do well with a refresher course on voice and vernacular, how to promote and advance the real American story in a way that is compelling and truthful.   Perhaps those of us who do higher education for a living can organize some continuing education for folks at the White House.

Maybe Shirley Sherrod can be a guest lecturer.

Perhaps we can take up a collection for a scholarship for Andrew Breitbart to sit in the back as well — so long as he attends every class this time.

Even better, perhaps Breitbart will endow the lecture series on Justice and Liberal Education to atone for his shameful neglect of his own education.

MUST READ:  E.J. Dionne, "Enough Right-Wing Propaganda"

See:  Frank Rich, "There's a Battle Outside and It's Still Ragin'"

See:  Maureen Dowd's column in today's New York Times

See:  Politico for a good analysis of the finger-pointing that has ensued in the Sherrod case

For more on the Sherrod case see "On Success" at the washingtonpost.com

Follow me on Twitter @TrinPrez

(AP Photo)

The sight of men in suits bedecked with brass buttons, epaulets with stars, and chests festooned with military ribbons is always a bit startling for us civilians, even in this town where uniforms are part of the passing governmental scene.    Even more startling is the transformation of President Barack Obama into a stern-faced commander-in-chief, flanked by General David Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen, asserting constitutionally-mandated civilian authority over the military officers in a moment when General Stanley McChrystal's careless words threatened to destabilize the established order.    President Obama acted swiftly to accept General McChrystal's resignation stemming from the Rolling Stone debacle.  General Petraeus will take charge of Afghanistan now, having managed to bring the War in Iraq to a place where American withdrawal is possible.

The War in Afghanistan is now America's longest war, almost nine years and counting.   Back in the day when Vietnam claimed that title, when that ugly war raged in the swamps and jungles of southeast Asia, Americans followed the war more closely, knew the names and faces of the generals and admirals (Westmoreland, Abrams and Zumwalt), and the daily death toll rang alarm bells that triggered protests across the nation.   Vietnam compelled the attention of regular citizens for one overwhelming reason:  the draft.  At age 18, every young man became a potential soldier, and the draft lottery became the dreaded "great mandala" determining who lived or died.   The draft ended in 1973, replaced by the all-volunteer Army.   Young men between the ages of 18 and 25 must still register in the Selective Service System, but no one has been drafted since 1973.

Ironically, in the Vietnam Era, the last place you'd expect to find a profile of an American war commander was in Rolling Stone, known far more as the newspaper of choice for the counterculture hippies, druggies, musicians and camp followers than a mouthpiece for mouthy generals.   Maybe McChrystal was so deeply into his studies at West Point that he missed the counterculture back then.   Did he think that Rolling Stone was some kind of tank magazine?

But I digress.

With no draft, Americans pay far less attention to military issues unless they are part of the volunteer service or families of those in service.   This diminishment of the general public's interest in issues of war and peace gives both politicians and military commanders more space to pursue various war strategies without having a greater sense of urgency to conclude the conflict and bring the troops home.   A collateral consequence in both Iraq and Afghanistan appears to be higher civilian casualty tolls as well, something we hear on news reports but don't seem to get too excited about.

The situation in Afghanistan is complicated, messy and unlikely to end well for the United States if history is any guide.  We went there to hunt down Osama Bin Laden.  Rumor has it that he's elsewhere.  Meanwhile, the necessary compromises of American strategy, including partnership with the increasingly dubious Hamid Karzai (who appeared to be trying to tell President Obama how to handle the McChrystal situation), reveal an entanglement with the Taliban and other local powers that seem eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam quagmire.   As an article in The Nation recounted last year,  "Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.  In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban."

ABC News updated the story just this week:  "The United States military is helping fund both sides of the war in Afghanistan, knowingly financing a mafia-like collection of warlords and some of the very insurgents American troops are battling, according to Afghan and American officials and a new Congressional study released today. The military has turned to private trucking companies to transport the vast majority of materiel it needs to fight the warthe Taliban to try to guarantee the trucks' safe passage, the reports charge. — everything from bullets to Gatorade, gas to sandbags — and in turn, the companies are using American money to pay, among others,  among others, the Taliban to try to guarantee the trucks' safe passage, the reports charge. Trucking executives and investigators from the House Subcommittee on National Security say the United States military knew it was helping fund the people it was fighting but did nothing about it, choosing to satisfy short-term delivery requirements and ignore fears that payments to the enemy help perpetuate Afghanistan's long-term security problems."

We need to pay more attention.  The Day of the Generals yesterday was good political theater on a hot day in Washington, but the McChrystal debacle belied the far more dangerous and consequential issues of this protracted war.  We are not winning, that's for sure.   President Obama campaigned on a promise to bring the troops home.   As commander-in-chief he certainly needs to make good military choices.   But as our national leader he also needs to live up to the will of the people who elected him.   In our form of government, it's not up to the generals; it's up to the people.

Read:  Bing West on 3 Keys to Victory in Afghanistan

What do you think?  Leave a comment below…

Join the discussion "On Success" at the washingtonpost.com

Follow me on Twitter @TrinityPrez