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June 17, 2009

what is freedom of religion for?

By: James Miller

[caption id="attachment_248" align="alignright" width="200" caption="A Taiji quan performance at a Daoist temple in Sichuan"][/caption] There is hardly a truth more sacred to the contemporary American imagination than that religion must be free from interference by the state and that the...
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May 13, 2009

sustainable economic decisions

By: James Miller

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="360" caption="A poster announces a power plant to be built in Tianjin, China."] [/caption] On Sunday the New York Times published a report,  China Outpaces U.S. in Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants, which documented China's transition to cleaner forms of...
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February 23, 2009

is democracy good for sustainability?

By: James Miller

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Sustainability Salute from the Green Olympic Volunteers"][/caption] I'm teaching a course in religion and the environment this term, and my students are preparing to debate this very question: is democracy good for sustainability? By way of...
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January 8, 2009

what has become of china’s eco-cities?

By: James Miller

[caption id="attachment_194" align="alignright" width="300" caption="An artist's rendering of the Dongtan eco-city"][/caption] There has been much news lately that the project to design a massive eco-city on Chongming Island near Shanghai may finally have fizzled out. The project, designed by the...
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December 30, 2008

china’s confucian revival

By: James Miller

By James Miller In a recent article entitled Two Big China Stories You Missed This Year Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a respected professor of Chinese history at UC Irvine, highlighted the rehabilitation of Confucius as one of the most significant trends in contemporary China....
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December 14, 2008

closing the religion deficit

By: James Miller

By James Miller An editorial in Friday's Dallas Morning News argued that Hillary Clinton, the incoming U.S. Secretary of State, should move to "close our diplomats' religion deficit." The argument was that in order to succeed in international relations, it's...
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