What I intended to accomplish in my little squib on the Earth Charter was only to shake the confidence of environmentalists that everything the most radical amongst them believe is not obviously true. As Oliver Cromwell said to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1650, and as...

In this column, Deirdre McCloskey argues that the practice of letters of recommendation is insane. The only correct procedure for assessing scholarship in hiring or promotion is for the responsible body to read the candidate's work and discuss its intellectual quality with immediate colleagues,...