When Daniel Gorenstein was chair, he did mathematics from 5am to 12noon, spending the second half of his working day on administration. When I was chair, I also spent half of my time on research: every other minute.

The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as "a terrorist organization" and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed.

We live in a state-centric world faced with global-scale problems that cannot be met by the actions of single states, no matter how powerful, if assessed from the perspective of military capabilities.

There are degrees of incompatibility, and there are more factors relevant to upholding democracy and human rights than the operation of neoliberal markets. Perhaps this point can be initially made by reference to the decline of democracy and the erosion of human rights within the United States since the 9/11 attacks.

An aggravating feature of this post-9/11 atmosphere is to cast suspicions on Muslims and on Islam as a religion that is interpreted as either inherently violent or death-oriented, with a particular animus against America and Americans.

I once got a call from a bank, asking me to compute a mortgage, since their computers were down. This was a very depressing moment.

The capitalist priority is efficiency of capital and profitability, which is generally inconsistent with protecting the vulnerabilities of people and nature.