Gerald R. Ford Leadership Forum
by Jeff Polet Our series of reflection essays are less intended to inform than to spur thinking. They are not meant to be final statements so much as opening ones, subject to further reproof, correction, and criticism. Mainly, they are drawing our readers’ attention to essays that are interesting and well-written. I submit this preface …
by Jeff Polet One particularly irritating feature in American politics is the tendency to confuse surface-level symptoms with underlying causes, a habit especially pronounced in the last eight years. One consequence is that we tend to think if we can just alter one prominent facet (or figure), then somehow the body will be healed. I …
By Jeff Polet I’ll confess that in my youth I was often regarded as mischievous, a moniker I’ve never fully outgrown and one in which I take some perverse delight. At a forum such as ours, committed as it is to rejuvenating virtue, it would seem that mischief would have no place. So it was …
by Jeff Polet Having spent roughly 30 years of my career on a college campus I can attest to many changes that took place in that time, but none has been more prominent nor alarming than the mental health crisis among our young students. If I recall correctly, my alma mater had opened its counseling …
by Jeff Polet In this nearly ten-year old essay, the philosopher Paul Bloom makes an argument against empathy (he subsequently published a book by the same title, but I’ve not read it). I’ll confess to being attracted to iconoclastic points of view, those that make us rethink something everyone knows to be right. Who could …
by Jeff Polet One of the most mistaken beliefs in our culture is the idea that technology is neutral in its application. One takes a risk, in Michigan, in suggesting that the automobile has been, on the whole, a social negative, but that’s precisely the argument I want to make. I could point to the …
by Jeff Polet Among the many temptations that undermine democratic citizenship, getting something for nothing would have to be near the top of the list. In America’s past debt crises, voices would emerge that would encourage citizens to engage in responsible economic activity, celebrating frugality and warning against the vice of luxuriousness. Aristotle regarded gambling …
by Jeff Polet An essay I wrote on justice recently appeared in the journal Religion and Liberty. It’s a lengthier essay, and anyone who reads it hoping that they’ll get a good definition of justice will be disappointed. In many ways, the concept of justice has fallen on hard times, not because of its lack …
by Jeff Polet After some time in the academy, I started obsessing about how certain words were being used. The academy entertains jargon at a very high level, and particular words and phrases often obscure meaning rather than reveal it. I could give numerous examples of this, but this habit is not relegated to the …
by Jeff Polet Artificial Intelligence is in the news with a vengeance as ChatGTP released a new version of “chatbot.” I’ll confess to a great deal of ignorance about how AI works and what its prospects are; I’ll also confess to my skepticism about the enterprise, since the word “artificial” is as suggestive as the …
