To ISIS I say: We Americans are just as angry as you are. So why not reach out to us? The results may surprise you!

As editor of Penn’s alumni magazine, the late Tony Lyle was a difficult boss who often fired staffers for failing to live up to his impossibly high standards. He also produced a superb magazine for 24 years before he himself was fired.

The trouble with the Republican presidential debates so far is that they haven’t really been debates — more like multiple press conferences. If the moderators would get out of the way and just let the candidates argue among themselves, we’d get much more useful insight.

What do the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Eagles have in common? Both are discovering that, in music as in sports, hiring talent is the easy part. The trick is getting great performers to play together.

Are Muslims (not to mention the rest of us) doomed to stew in the resentments of the past? In the process of contending that blood is destiny, Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced provokes us to prove him wrong.

Shouldn’t the best and brightest high school students get first crack at America’s top universities, regardless of their race, creed, or nationality? Not necessarily. Consider, for example, Columbia University’s unfortunate Class of 1964.

After 34 years, the City Paper's final issue appears this week. But this alternative weekly survived much longer than it should have. As its former competitor, I observed the saga from a front-row seat.

A collision on Philadelphia’s popular new Schuylkill River Trail landed BSR music critic Tom Purdom in the intensive care unit. Polymath that he is, Tom prefers to focus on the larger urban policy implications rather than the recklessness of the biker who blindsided him.

How will Philadelphia survive the Pope’s visit? The same way humankind has survived most of its crises: with humor. To help you endure Papal Week, here are some of my favorite religious jokes — Catholic and otherwise.

When we discuss immigrants and refugees, are we talking about malignant cancer cells spreading across the globe? Or are we talking about valuable human capital?