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A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

A nonprofit, independent news source to inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community.

St. Louis Jewish Light

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including his latest: “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Charlottesville and healing the racial divide

By Marty RochesterPublished September 27, 2017

Charlottesville. It now takes its place with other iconic names in the history of American social movements, such as Selma, Stonewall, Kent State and Berkeley.  Weeks after the event, the story continues to consume us, even spilling into sportscasts,...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including  his latest book, “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

President Trump deserves opportunity to govern

By Marty RochesterPublished August 17, 2017

We are roughly at the half-year mark of President Donald Trump’s administration. I am quite sure that if one did a content analysis of mainstream news media reporting on American politics since January, one would find an overwhelming percentage of coverage...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including his latest: “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Time to punish bad behavior

By Marty RochesterPublished July 26, 2017

O.J. is free again.As a society we seem to tolerate and even encourage bad behavior. Our major institutions, such as public schools and government, do not do a very effective job of using rewards to incentivize good behavior and punishments to dis-incentivize...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including  his latest book, “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Polarization and the vanishing middle

By Marty RochesterPublished June 22, 2017

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” — W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1919“The upright path is the middle path of all the qualities known to man. This is the path which is equally distant from...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including  his latest book, “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Brexit has lessons for Europe and the U.S.

By Marty RochesterPublished May 18, 2017

When the British people voted last June to leave the European Union, it was as shocking an outcome as the U.S. presidential election in November. On March 29, British Prime Minister Theresa May formally began the difficult process of negotiating Britain’s...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including  his latest book, “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Today’s ‘angry minds’ can be found on the left

By Marty RochesterPublished April 27, 2017

Richard Hofstadter’s famous 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” long has been associated with the threat posed by the far right. However, Hofstadter started the essay by writing that  “American politics has often been an arena...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including  his latest book, “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Donald Trump and bigotry

By Marty RochesterPublished March 30, 2017

Is President Donald Trump a bigot, as many of his detractors claim? He surely has many flaws, some of which I often have written about — for example, his careless, even reckless, unpresidential tweets. But I doubt bigotry is one of them, at least based...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including  his latest book, “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”

Buckle up for Trump’s foreign policy, whatever it is

By Marty RochesterPublished February 22, 2017

In the words on the cover of the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, it is now “Trump Time.” What are we to make of Donald Trump’s foreign policy, beyond the early tumult over refugees and other issues? What might it look like over the next four years?It...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including the recently published “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.” In addition to teaching courses in international politics, international organization and law, and U.S. foreign policy, he has served as chair of the Political Science Dept. at UM-St. Louis.

A New Year’s resolution as we begin the Trump era

By Marty RochesterPublished January 18, 2017

It is the time of year for making New Year’s resolutions. I resolve to continue to struggle to be as colorblind as possible. What does this mean? It commits me to the following:First, I will ignore those who believe that we cannot and should not be...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including the recently published “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.” In addition to teaching courses in international politics, international organization and law, and U.S. foreign policy, he has served as chair of the Political Science Dept. at UM-St. Louis.

Patriotism and protests

By Marty RochesterPublished December 8, 2016

By now, you probably have heard of  Hampshire College in Massachusetts lowering the American flag to half-mast after Donald Trump’s election. In the same spirit, other colleges offered expanded grief counseling services, anticipating an unusually heavy...

The 2016 election: A post-mortem

By Marty RochesterPublished November 16, 2016

We are all still recovering from the shock of the 2016 presidential election. Virtually nobody, including the leading political scientists in the country, predicted the outcome that saw Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. We are left with deciphering...

J. Martin Rochester, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is author of 10 books on international and American politics, including the recently published “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.” In addition to teaching courses in international politics, international organization and law, and U.S. foreign policy, he has served as chair of the Political Science Dept. at UM-St. Louis.

The United Nations at 70: Another fork in the road

By Marty RochesterPublished October 26, 2016

In June, the Jewish Light reported the startling news that Israel had just been elected to chair the United Nations Legal Committee, the first time Israel was selected to head a U.N. permanent committee.  Perhaps it is time to take another look at an...

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