This year's new university students are settling into life on campuses often notable for their diversity ' and that includes in religion. Over 33,000 Buddhist students started university in the UK in 2023-24, for instance, alongside 769,220 Christian and 37,520 Sikh students. We surveyed 1,000 students twice, one year apart. We wanted to investigate how the university environment, or campus climate, influences how students engage with other religions and worldviews. To assess this we asked students how far they agreed with statements such as 'there are people of other faiths or beliefs whom I admire', 'I try to build relationships with people who hold religious or non-religious beliefs that I disagree with', and 'my faith or beliefs are strengthened by relationships with those of diverse religious and non-religious backgrounds'. First, students feel more positive about difference when they see a diversity of worldviews around them. When students think of their campus as a place inhabited by students of a wide range of religious and non-religious worldviews, this correlates with growth in pluralism orientation. Interestingly, this is less about actual diversity than perceived diversity. We tested an analysis of actual diversity, and it wasn't significant. It's what students perceive that makes a difference....

Two hundred years ago, on Oct. 26, 1825, New York Gov. DeWitt Clinton boarded a canal boat by the shores of Lake Erie. Amid boisterous festivities, his vessel, the Seneca Chief, embarked from Buffalo, the westernmost port of his brand-new Erie Canal. Clinton and his flotilla made their way east to the canal's terminus in Albany, then down the Hudson River to New York City. This maiden voyage culminated on Nov. 4 with a ceremonial disgorging of barrels full of Lake Erie water into the brine of the Atlantic: pure political theater he called 'the Wedding of the Waters.' The Erie Canal, whose bicentennial is being celebrated all month, is an engineering marvel ' a National Historic Monument enshrined in folk song. Such was its legacy that as a young politician, Abraham Lincoln dreamed of becoming 'the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois.' As a historian of the 19th-century frontier, I'm fascinated by how civil engineering shaped America ' especially given the country's struggles to fix its aging infrastructure today. The opening of the Erie Canal reached beyond Clinton's Empire State, cementing the Midwest into the prosperity of the growing nation. This human-made waterway transformed America's economy and immigration while helping fuel a passionate religious revival....

In October 2025, Cecil Roberts will officially retire from his role as president of the United Mine Workers of America. A sixth-generation coal miner, he has led the union for 30 years. Only one man held the role longer: John L. Lewis, whom many consider one of the most important labor leaders of the 20th century. Roberts has seen the union through an especially difficult period for the coal industry and grew up immersed in it. He was raised in Cabin Creek, West Virginia, where his great-grandmother ' an activist in her own right ' let miners camp on her property during a legendary strike in 1912. Bill Blizzard, his great-uncle, led miners during the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. Both of his grandfathers died in mine accidents. And there's another way Roberts is steeped in Appalachian history: Before an audience of workers, observers have often noted, he speaks like a preacher. Roberts likens miners' struggles to biblical stories, references the power of God and the teachings of Jesus, and speaks in the dynamic cadences found in an Appalachian church....

Many factors can shape how someone views abortion ' gender, age and education, to name a few. Around the world, however, religious belief is the most powerful predictor that someone will disapprove, as I document in my 2025 book, 'Fetal Positions.' Faith traditions' teachings about abortion vary ' and there is diversity of opinions within faiths, too. On average, though, people who say that religion is important in their lives are far more likely to think abortion is morally wrong. But here's the paradox: There's a difference between abstract views and personal decisions. On average, strong religious beliefs and involvement in a religious community do not make an American woman less likely to terminate her first pregnancy, so long as she conceives without a potential marriage partner. The picture becomes even more complex when we consider not just how religious someone is but which tradition they belong to. Young American women in conservative Protestant churches are about half as likely to say they have aborted a premarital pregnancy than Catholics and mainline Protestants, regardless of how devout they are, according to my co-authored research. Other work has found similar differences among Christian groups. There were too few respondents from other religions to fully assess differences, though unmarried young Jewish women in the U.S. likewise appear to have higher odds of obtaining an abortion than conservative Protestants....