The COVID-19 pandemic has created great challenges as we all grapple with protecting the health and safety of residents, work to manage the spread of the disease and deal with the steep economic and social consequences the pandemic has left in its wake. Until COVID-19 is controlled, likely ...

I am the director of Graduate Studies for the Philosophy Department at the University of Kansas, overseeing our masters and doctoral programs. One-third of our graduate students come from abroad. They represent eight countries across four continents. There’s no hyperbole in saying that our ...

For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, we watched the taking of yet another life at the hands of those whose duty is to serve and protect. We reach out today as we continue to grapple with the devastation caused by the most recent instances in a continuation of generations of violence against black ...

To my fellow white clergy: Martin Luther King Jr. said, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” That time is now, and has been since 1619. The killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd are but the most recent acts of injustice the American black community has ...

University of Kansas Chancellor Douglas Girod, under criticism from the Journal-World, recently admitted that KU has lost around 26% of its general operating budget due to the coronavirus lockdown. Now students, staff and faculty are on tenterhooks, waiting for information about budgets, salary ...

Your family takes great pride in helping each other across generations. The grandparents regularly set aside money, knowing that your dream is to build a second home on a few acres of land the family owns. You could not do it without them. They want to do it for you. After years of their ...

We continue to work closely together — now more than ever — to protect the health and safety of all Douglas County residents and to provide critical services during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is our top priority. On March 23, Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, LMH Health, Douglas ...

Life has changed. All that is critically important to each of us is now more clearly in focus. Life is precious. Family and community are treasured gifts, more central to life than we may have realized in the busy and hectic days before life changed. The unknowns, the worries, the concerns ...

On Feb. 11, the Lawrence City Commission expressed its support for moving forward on drafting a policy that would require the Lawrence Police Department to limit cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in certain cases, which would put our community’s safety at risk. ...

I write as an advocate for Medicaid expansion in Kansas and as a promoter of Republican-Democrat compromise. I served as a state senator from Lawrence from 1983 to 1992, and I also serve as chairman of Save Kansas Coalition Inc., a bipartisan group. I am concerned that this important advance ...

Sleepy eyed on a recent Sunday morning, a young mom named Rebecca and her two children, Byron, 6 and Kennedy, 2, wandered over to the Lawrence Community Shelter’s front desk, the place where I was stationed as a volunteer. I had brought doughnuts. “Would you like one?” I asked. ...

UTeach was created at the University of Texas at Austin in 1997 because Texas needed more math and science teachers. Through collaboration between the colleges of science and education, the number of science and mathematics teachers graduating per year doubled, the graduates went into teaching, ...

I am writing as a Kansan, a mother and as a biology professor at the University of Kansas. I am tremendously concerned by the proposed elimination of the UKanTeach program at KU. This program prepares high school teachers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math). I take my ...

During her recent announcement of candidacy for the U.S. Senate, Susan Wagle stated that “Socialized medicine, which leads to long waits, poor care, lack of choice and health care rationing, is never the answer.” I would like to know how she supports those claims about this very important ...

I read with dismay that the Lawrence Community Homeless Shelter is reducing the number of clients it can serve from 125 to 60. Hundreds of people who gave generously to help the Shelter acquire and furnish the current facility will be equally disappointed. When the move was made, the ...

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since I retired. The days roll into weeks, the weeks to months and the months to years. Still, I remember a certain day in August 2015 like it was yesterday. It was my first day as a volunteer at Just Food here in Lawrence. It was also the day ...

For decades, Americans have been looking up to the night sky for answers to humanity’s biggest questions. This summer is particularly special, however, as we remember the immense achievement of putting a man on the moon 50 years ago and wonder where exploration will take us next. The ...

Fifteen out of 240 minutes. That’s how much time was devoted to the unfolding climate crisis during the first set of Democratic presidential debates. Six percent of the total time (toward the tail end of the debates) devoted to a topic that threatens our existence as a species. A topic that ...

Last year, the Journal-World joined 350 of the nation’s newspapers in decrying the repeated slogan from the White House that “the press is the enemy of the people.” These are really code words for “the facts are the enemy of the people,” particularly facts reported by the press that ...

One person committing suicide is too many. That’s been a given as our behavioral health collaborative partners have begun working on strategies to reduce Douglas County’s suicide rate as part of our current Community Health Plan. Sadly, our age-adjusted suicide rate of 15.4 deaths per ...