Letter from the Director
May 2008
Every other semester I teach a course called “The American Culture War.” Beginning with Robert Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah, we look at the role moral and cultural issues such as abortion and gay rights have played in recent American politics. The students seem to like it. I love it.
This year I began by asking whether I would be teaching the course in the future. For when we began in January, it really did seem as if the culture war had come to an end. Iraq and the economy — these were going to be the issues in the presidential campaign. Finally, Americans seemed to have tired of hysterical charges and symbolic politics. They were going to focus on the real world.
And so what do we have now? Bittergate, Rev. Wright, charges of elitism, and precious little attention to Iraq and the economy. It seems I will be teaching this course for some time to come, with plenty of new material to add.
We do our part at the Boisi Center to examine these developments. Our panel on gay marriage was a big success: large audience, thoughtful conversation, plenty of passion along with gobs of reason. We had an equally successful panel discussion on what Americans owe the Iraqis. And, in conjunction with the Provost’s Committee on the Catholic Intellectual Traditions, we hosted John DiIulio, first head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. John’s talk was wonderful, and he was accompanied, in song, by Boston’s Rev. Eugene Rivers. It was a terrific evening.
My biggest role in the presidential primaries ended when John McCain locked up the Republican nomination. Fascinated by Mormonism, I learned as much as I could about this faith, participated in conferences on the subject, and spoke to the media about Romney’s campaign. I do believe that he was to some degree victimized by religious discrimination within his own party; Southern Baptists continue to distrust Mormons, and a lot of Southern Baptists vote in the Republican primaries.
No doubt the election will be a major focus on our fall events. But as we start to think about our upcoming tenth anniversary (in the 2009-10 academic year) we will have a lot more on our plates this coming year as well. As always, nothing could take place at the Boisi Center without our staff. Besides the regulars, Susan Richard and Erik Owens, we had a terrific team this year and I thank them all: graduate research assistants John Crowley-Buck, Suzanne Hevelone and Hillary Thompson, and our webmaster Isabelle Martinez.
A final note: if you haven’t visited our web site (www.bc.edu/boisi) lately, I encourage you to do so. Not only has the home page been redesigned and refined, we have also posted a wide array of content (audio and video, photos, interviews with speakers, links to further reading, etc.) generated from nearly all of our events in the last two years. Just click on “resources” or “public events” on the main navigation area to browse by media type or date.
Alan Wolfe