Any society that spends this much time debating the genetic makeup of Jewish people is not a healthy society.
22.02.2026 12:49
👍 5
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
Any society that spends this much time debating the genetic makeup of Jewish people is not a healthy society.
Absolutely, yes.
Exciting news in our house:
Sara Kohen is running for a seat on the Omaha Public Power District board of directors. It’s an important role in our community and I hope a lot of people will jump in to help her win this race!
Lots of info is here:
saraforoppd.com
Instead, it’s going to take a whole bunch of people doing some pretty specific things. And so I thought I’d write a bit more concretely about all of this:
arikohen.substack.com/p/what-peopl...
But, if liberalism is going to survive this period, it won’t be because someone wrote a really fantastic Substack post with some (admittedly) general ideas about how we can move forward.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the pervasive sense that the slow decline of liberalism has sped up considerably but at the same time that it’s not clear what we can do about it.
And lest we get to a point where anyone says to themselves, “This doesn’t apply to me,” we should be clear that the question of what it means to have and exercise our rights is a central one to all of us as citizens of a liberal democratic republic.
Read the whole post: substack.com/home/post/p-...
If we feel that we cannot safely attend a protest or film a law enforcement officer or legally carry a gun—whether or not we will ever do these things or have any desire to ever do them—then we cannot be said to have these rights in any meaningful way.
Maybe we’ve reached a point of no return?
I wrote all about this and you can find the whole post over here: arikohen.substack.com/p/new-year-s...
In fact the first weeks of the new year haven’t just felt like more of 2025 for political liberals but significantly worse. Whether or not we can actually measure it, it certainly feels like the pace at which liberal democratic norms and institutions are eroding has sped up considerably.
It’s 2026! But when it comes to writing about liberalism we haven’t changed very much by breaking out that new “12 Hilarious Basset Hounds for 2026” calendar we got for Hanukkah last month.
Here's how it went and what I learned:
arikohen.substack.com/p/semesters-...
Since the class focused on Israel, the Palestinians, and the politics of the Middle East, it seemed a good contender for a class where we should be up front about how we study contentious topics.
Right before the beginning of this semester, I made a series of changes to the syllabus of one of my classes after attending a seminar on teaching civil discourse.
I think this is just obviously true and I assume that it’s something everyone understands at some level. We either do this thing together or it probably doesn’t get done.
Read the whole post here:
arikohen.substack.com/p/thinking-a...
I say this to my kids when I have to miss dinner because I’m going to an evening lecture on campus. I say it to explain my level of volunteerism. And I say it when I’m trying to convince someone to join a Board or show up to an event.
I find that I repeat myself a fair amount, and not just because I’m getting older and more forgetful. One thing that I never get tired of saying is that a community is only as good as you make it.
Yes! More and more I’m convinced that single biggest problem we face is that people have lost or given up on the idea of the university as a community where amazing things happen due to the proximity and repeated interactions of interesting people.
This is how a scenius begins. But if you’re not there, it can’t.
Read the whole post here: arikohen.substack.com/p/the-sceniu...
If you show up, you’ll learn something. And you might meet the person with whom you’ll have everything in common. The person with whom you have nothing in common. The person you’ll travel with and the person you’ll end up arguing with and the person you’ll end up splitting a pizza with.
If there’s one thing I find myself saying to my students in every class I teach, it’s this: we need to spend more time together.
...gave the lie to Trump's repeated attempts to cast protesters as terrorists. All of the people who came together spoke with a single voice on an issue of grave importance to a liberal democracy: power must be temporary and accountable. And now what?
Some thoughts here:
With another successful “No Kings” protest in the books, there are some who are—rightly, I would say—feeling buoyed by the effort. The crowd sizes were impressive, the signs were both deeply funny and deeply serious (sometimes at the same time), and the people in adorable costumes...
As I often tell my students, time is always running out; there’s always going to be less of it than you hope for and, as a result, it’s probably the truest expression of our priorities.
open.substack.com/pub/arikohen...
I grapple with all of it and with the demands of being a political liberal in my latest post:
arikohen.substack.com/p/two-things...
Charlie Kirk’s murder hit me harder than I ever could have anticipated, not because I liked or agreed with him but because I disliked and disagreed with him so vehemently. I felt as though I had a personal relationship with Kirk over the past decade, one that consisted of him making my life worse.
Yes, indeed. There are a bunch of recent books on the topic and there’s even a journal called Heroism Science!
In about 30 minutes, we’ll be hosting a great event and, if you’re not in Lincoln, you can tune in online using the following link:
