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Shuttle diplomacy

Not seen since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the age of phrenetic shuttle diplomacy has returned with Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff. Witkoff, the President’s Chief negotiator, is shuttling to the Middle East, where he handles Iranian and Hamas discussions, and to Moscow for talks on Ukraine. Like Kissinger in 1970-72, he is considered the administration’s top point man for foreign policy. Indeed, he has outstripped Marco Rubio in having Trump’s confidence. And Witkoff has gone Kissinger one better. While Kissinger still held the National Security Council Advisor ...

Don’t underestimate value of recognition

“I receive recognition for performance” is a common question on employee engagement surveys. In building a culture of trust, it is a top-five item. This is an area I have spent a large amount of time thinking about, writing about, and presenting on. In college, I was introduced to the work of Marc Gold. During the late 1960s, he formulated a way to help people with significant disabilities learn complex tasks. He called it “Try Another Way.” It takes complex tasks and breaks them into sequential steps with positive recognition.  Throughout my career, Marc Gold’s method ...

Secret ingredient

At Davis & Elkins College, student success is not just a goal—it is the heart of everything we do. Often, the secret ingredient to that success is not found in a textbook or even a classroom, but in the unexpected magic of community. Whether it is leading a student club, singing harmonies in the choir, or competing on the ballfield, connection fuels growth. Greek life is another significant means to relationships and connections. Fraternities and sororities can be icing on the collegiate cake—brotherhood, sisterhood, and memories to last a lifetime. As the saying goes, ...

2025 legislative session

The 2025 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature is finally done, wrapping up midnight Saturday after 60 days of floor sessions, committee meetings and debates. I get asked a lot during a session about whether I think a session was good or productive. This year I was asked for letter grades in regard to specific public policy items and how the Legislature did. I kind of regret having done that. Honestly, only you, the public, can decide whether your lawmakers adequately addressed the issues you are concerned about and voted for these people to solve. The entire 100-member ...

Bannon and Musk

“You come late, but yet you come.” This quote by the philosopher Schopenhauer could be aptly applied to Stephen Bannon’s attempt to cozy up to Elon Musk. Previously, Bannon called him a “broligarch” and an “illegal alien” and hinted that he may be a fraud. However, having irritated the White House enough, he changed his tune to praising DOGE as “effective and excellent,” likening it to “shock troops.” Without much doubt, it appears that Trump engineered the conciliation just about the time he was putting distance between himself and Musk. What is interesting is ...

Effects of Trump’s tariffs

It has been hard this past week, of tariffs applied worldwide on April 2 to tariffs suspended except for China on April 9, to avoid reflecting on how much trouble could have been avoided if economists, instead of talking about countries’ trade surpluses and trade deficits, had devised different words — say, “buyer-dominant” countries and “seller-dominant” countries. Perhaps in that case, President Donald Trump would not have been obsessed for the last 40 years by the notion that the United States is impoverished when it buys more from some country than that country buys ...