Still ranking first this last week by a wide margin was Lance Welton’s early column on the severe damage being done to academia by the increasingly female faculty of our elite universities, which became the subject of a roiling ideological controversy that even reached the pages of the August New York Times and other national media outlets.  Eric Rasmusen of the Economics faculty of Indiana University had Tweeted out a brief mention of the piece and this was noticed and denounced by an ardent feminist-activist on Social Media, with the resulting Tweets and replies apparently being viewed some two million times, producing considerable traffic for the original piece, and sparking calls for Prof. Rasmusen’s censorship or firing, with the Provost at his institution condemning his sentiments.  Rasmusen soon published his own response to these harsh attacks on intellectual freedom, which ranked fifth this last week, and the two pieces together attracted nearly 600 comments totaling over 60,000 words.

Our second most popular featured article this last week was Israel Shamir’s focus on the strange political dynamics of the Trump administration, with Trump providing endless benefits to Jewish groups and the pro-Israel Lobby, and its staunch adherents in Congress responding by organizing his impeachment, a very strange state of affairs.

Ranking third was another JFK assassination article by Laurent Guyenot, running on the 56th anniversary of that tragic event, with the focus this time being on the so-called “Umbrella Man,” a suspicious individual who was photographed holding an umbrella in the vicinity of the slaying and later came forward to say he did so as a symbolic protest against Kennedy policies.  The resulting debate on this and other JFK assassination issues quickly attracted almost 600 comments, totaling more than 80,000 words.

Fourth place was held by a lengthy discussion of the concept of “Judeo-Christianity,” which recently became a subject of discussion due to the controversy surrounding the views of conservative political activist Ben Shapiro, with Vernon Thorpe arguing that its historical or philosophical validity was much less than its proponents made it out to be.

Finally, rounding out our most popular featuring pieces was John Wear’s historical analysis of whether or not Robert Oppenheimer of our atomic weapons program was actually a Soviet agent as many at the time accused him of being.