I have never used this Blog as a platform for my particular political views (even though I suppose they are easily enough seen by a careful reader) or to convert anyone to them.  And I’m not about to start now.   But I do have a category of comment on the blog, not used very often, on “Religion in the News.”   And a couple of news items appeared this past week that are “close to home” for me – one involving Duke University, which is literally close to home (less than a mile from where I live, move, and have my being) and the other involving Oxford University Press, with whom I have published almost all my academic books over the past twenty-two years and with whom I have a very good personal and professional relationship.   Both of these news items involve the relationship of an academic institution to recent developments in Islam. The situation at Duke is this.   In the face of radical Islam fundamentalism and its much maligned jihadist and terrorist element– maligned by [...]