"This was not just a story for the Georgetown community, or the Washington community, or the Polish community, or the American community. We cannot own Karski. Like Lincoln, he belongs to the ages. Karski’s story is a story for the world. It is the story of eternal virtues: courage in the face of fear, commitment to justice, and honor—the honor to remain true to one’s fundamental sense of right and wrong."

"The current controversy over the legitimacy of same-sex marriage reveals a number of fault lines both in our conception of citizenship and also in our thinking about the relationship of church and state in a modern liberal democracy. Marriage is in many ways a private, consensual relationship, yet its contours are defined by public policy. It is entered by a civil contract, yet it may also be religiously sanctioned by clergy invested with civil authority. In the United States the First Amendment prohibition against establishment of religion implies that the nature of the institution of marriage should not be dictated by religious beliefs. Yet the First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion suggests that religious citizens, like nonreligious citizens with strong moral and ethical convictions, may seek to shape civil institutions so that these reflect their sincere beliefs."

"Here are a father’s words to a son soon headed off to college: ‘Sigue adelante. Te quiero.’ Keep moving forward. I love you. It’s a sentiment concomitant with good family values. But there’s a problem. The words are shared by a man in Arizona then hauled off in an ICE van, to be deported back to Mexico. The scene is one that Kristin E. Heyer uses to introduce the human dimension of immigration policy in Kinship Across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration."

"As other researchers with START have noted, successful terrorist attacks within the United States are extremely rare, even though when they do occur they can be devastating. My research shows that there have been more than 100 attempted attacks within the U.S. since 2001, and most of them have been prevented because they came to the attention of law enforcement through public tips or confidential informants. I don’t actually think the Boston bombers were all that different from other would-be attackers in recent years—they weren’t terrorist masterminds. But they happened to stay under the radar, and for some reason they don’t appear to have talked about their plans to anyone who was worried enough to contact the authorities."