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Higher education in the United States is in crisis. Though powerful, the financial maelstrom that has consumed many institutions may not be the vortex of most significance. We argue that colleges and universities have forsaken their fundamental mission and purposes, and particularly the role of religion in those purposes. We first examine three primary arguments about the relationship between religion and higher education: what may be loosely characterized as explicit separation; the inculcation of "academic virtues"; and authentic integration founded upon principles of piety, robust pluralism, and the Reformed tradition. The article concludes by advancing what the last of these relationships might look like, identifying ways teacher-scholars in the arts and humanities might invoke a more authentic integration and collaboratively engage in the necessary conversations about our mission and purposes.

Emerson's example as a reformer invites continued disagreement. Few studies, however, have offered sustained rhetorical investigations of his antislavery speeches and writings, and extant scholarship has generally slighted the significance of audience to these persuasive efforts. Edwin Black's ''The Second Persona 'provides the orientation that guides efforts to locate the audience in Emerson's 7 March 1854 'Fugitive Slave Law' in order to demonstrate how the speech constructs a distinct mode of rhetorical judgment. The assumptions of Black's landmark essay and their utility to contemporary criticism are then assessed. Key Words: Emerson, Webster, judgment., implied audience, 'The Second Persona'

Michael Butterworth's lead article in the August-October special issue of Communication & Sport raised important insights about unity within sport. This reply argues that those insights were encumbered by a blind spot: Where Butterworth critiqued examples of unity that minimized the agonistic spirit of sport, he gave free pass to calls for unity on behalf of social justice. My reply works through examples of dissent from protests that marked the sporting landscape following the murder of George Floyd. Specifically, I consider the case of Rachel Hill, an attacker for the Chicago Red Stars of the Women's National Soccer League, who elected to stand during the national anthem while her entire team kneeled in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Hill's "tinted dissent" poses difficult questions for Butterworth's theorizing about the merits of rivalry and sporting agonism: Thinking beyond the national anthem, how might Hill's decision to stand, and the backlash she endured, reveal a troubling totalizing logic within calls for social justice? Can our scholarship make space for dispositions that strive to understand, and not solely critique, the strange dynamics of power that pervade sport? How should instances of dissenting athlete-activism be judged? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 1881 address of reformer Frederick Douglass that paid tribute to abolitionist John Brown and the theory on John Brown problem. Topics mentioned include the problem of his oration with meanings for contemporary social justice work, the legacy of John Brown that navigated between resignation and hagiography, and the delivery of the address at Storer College in West Virginia.

This article argues that Barack Obama's rhetorical example—captured in 4 addresses in response to acts of violence—suggests habits of mind to help us begin to navigate perhaps the most vexing democratic conundrum of our age: Can we find words to realize reconciliation and trust across lines of racial difference, given the violence that infects our efforts to talk to each other? The tensions occasioned by the intersection of race and violence comprised the defining conditions of Obama's presidency. The underpinnings of those conditions and the ways Obama rhetorically worked within them invite us to profoundly rethink how we might articulate a nuanced civic honesty, an honesty inflected by the rhetorical-politics of Black anger modeled by James Baldwin. Together, this honesty, that anger, illuminate understandings of the ways Obama marshaled rhetorical resources to combat the political lynchings ravaging our contemporary civic polity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The connection between television and nature is, at best, imperceptible. Television pulls its viewers into a fantasy world where image and appearance are everything, and variety is a four-letter word. [...]

This article examines how a specific faith tradition might help see deliberative democracy through new eyes. Published by a special task force for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Season of Discernment demonstrates ways deliberative democracy might claim new legitimacy, in the form of a deeper, more authentic engagement with the challenges of moral diversity. The article first sketches some of the problems of deliberative democracy, giving special attention to trust, loss, and sacrifice. Then, an interpretive context for the report is augmented by close attention to the rhetorical potential of discernment and authority as these are articulated in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines Edwin Black's seminal essay `The Second Persona' which provides the orientation that guides efforts to locate the audience in Ralph Waldo Emerson's `Fugitive Slave Law' oration. Effect of Daniel Webster on Emerson's speech; Distinct mode of rhetorical judgment; Assumptions of Black's essay.