Warriors sacrifice for country and cause—no question about that. But what of the loved ones who stand and wait? What of the children not yet born who will tend the scars of battle without ever having met the healthy parent who went to war? Duane Ruth-Heffelbower speaks to those questions powerfully from a personal and professional perspective in this week's Scholars Speak.

Homework. We all did it. OK, we didn’t like it, but it helped us learn, right?

Well…

Scott Key, education professor at Fresno Pacific University, isn’t so sure. In fact, he’s convinced the opposite is true. The “insanity” of homework is his subject in this week’s Scholars Speak.

"We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

It's an old joke—few under 50 could identify the source—but it applies to all of us some of the time and some of us, seemingly, all of the time. How can it be that rational people make bad choices? Well, this week's Scholars Speak by FPU Psychology Professor Jay Pope offers some ideas.

Martin Luther King Jr. left a vast legacy for the movement he personified and the nation he loved. But he left more—King left us a vision of America where there is no gap between the words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and the actions of both powerful leaders and everyday citizens.

Twenty-one years ago, on January 20, 1986, the first national Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday was observed.

The Military Commissions Act is coming under a great deal of attention right now and Duane Ruth-Heffelbower—a former U.S. Air Force attorney who is now a Fresno Pacific University professor working with peace and conflict issues—has a unique perspective on the act: both the need for it and the need to fix it.

What has education legislation to do with patriotism? Or the military? The answer might surprise you. Sometimes it’s good to read the small print, and Fresno Pacific University Education Professor Scott Key has done just that with No Child Left Behind, the defining document of the Bush Administration’s approach to education. He shares what he found in this week’s Scholars Speak.

"Publish or perish" - we hear it a lot on university campuses: to keep a job, professors must produce learned articles and books. This means they must do research, which sometimes means the only view students get of their teachers is from the far end of a lecture hall.

This is education? That's the question for Rod Janzen, senior scholar, in this week's Scholars Speak.

 Slabs of ice cave off arctic glaciers and plunge into the ocean. Glaciers disappear from Switzerland to Montana. Record high average temperatures and more severe storms everywhere. These are but a few illustrations of the reality of global warming.

 I have followed the Ted Haggard scandal closely since it broke November 2, waiting for some distance and perspective. As was predictable, we now have confirmation from the New Life Church board that “without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct,” as well as Haggard’s own confession.

As a professor of contemporary Christian ministries, I spent several class sessions considering the many facets of this story with my students. Let me distill that discussion down to three conclusions:

Slavery: a horrible memory of American history, or an ongoing crisis? As Scott Key, an education professor at Fresno Pacific University, shows in this week's Scholars Speak, slavery has changed its face but is still present among us.