Most Recent in Politics:

1Ted Cruz Won Because of Rural Texas, but Beto Made Small Gains for Democrats

2The Midterms Trigger a Seismic Shift in Harris County’s Courts

3Trump’s Sabotage of ACA Enrollment Is Particularly Dangerous in Texas

4Texas is a Purple State Now. The Proof is in Last Night’s Results.

5Loon Star: Blue Wave

6The Disconnect Between Ted Cruz’s Victory Speech and What Actually Happened in Texas

Most Recent in Environment:

1In East Texas, Chicken Plants are Polluting Rivers and Lakes with Oxygen-Sucking Contaminants

2Why Environmental Groups Are Salty on Corpus Christi’s Pricey Desalination Plan

3Despite Trump and Rick Perry’s Best Efforts, Another Coal Plant Eats the Dust in Texas

4Exxon Appears to Mislead State to Secure Tax Break

5After the Flood, the Political Storm?

6Government Asks Court for More Time To Fix Houston’s Decades-Long Sewage Problem

Most Recent in Border:

2Border Residents Protest Trump’s Wall in Hidalgo County

3AUDIO: Melissa del Bosque and Rachel Poser on Border Patrol’s Unchecked Mission Creep

4More Than 150 Families Separated at the Border Remain Locked Up in Texas

5U.S. and Mexican Officials Collaborating to Stop Asylum-Seekers, Attorneys Allege

6Checkpoint Nation

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1The Midterms Trigger a Seismic Shift in Harris County’s Courts

2Harris County Judges May Face a Reckoning Over Bail On Election Day

3Dallas County’s Cop-Convicting DA Is Among the Most Vulnerable Down-Ballot Republicans This Election

4Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System

5In Arlington, How Not to Respond to a Police Shooting

6Texas Prisons Lead the Nation in Long-Term Solitary Confinement

Most Recent in Education:

1In Violation of Texas Law, Most High Schools Aren’t Giving Students the Chance to Register to Vote

2Amid Record Youth Suicide Attempts, Texas Lags in Prevention Training for Teachers

3Cash-Strapped Rural Texas Schools Look to Universities for Help

4What’s in a Name? Texas SBOE Tentatively Approves ‘Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies’

5SMU Just Lost Its Independent Student Newspaper. Is Your College Next?

6Lawsuit: Texas Art Teacher Suspended Because She Told Students About Her Wife

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Trump’s Sabotage of ACA Enrollment Is Particularly Dangerous in Texas

2In the Rio Grande Valley, New Citizens Turn Out to Vote for the First Time

3We Support Pre-Existing Condition Protections, Say Republicans Who’ve Repeatedly Tried to Eliminate Them

4Meet Mikael Love, the OB-GYN Who Doesn’t Prescribe Birth Control

5Without Planned Parenthood, Almost Half the Providers in Texas’ Women’s Health Program Saw No Patients

6Texas Ends Contracts for Anti-Abortion Group Tapped to Provide Women’s Health Services

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

2The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

3Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps

4Senfronia Thompson Says #MeToo: Texas Lawmaker on 45 Years of Sexism, Racism at the Capitol

5Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo on Sanctuary Cities, Police Unions and Tommy Guns

6Meet Nueces County’s New DA, a Self-Professed ‘Mexican Biker Lawyer Covered in Tattoos’

Most Recent in Books:

1‘Beyoncé in Formation’ is a Texas Professor’s Love Letter to Queen B

2Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System

3Best of the 2018 Texas Book Festival: An Observer Staff Guide

4An Evocative New Memoir of Nature and Loss Never Quite Gets Off the Ground

5Listen to Survivors, Urges a New Book of Essays on Injustice

6Burn It All Down

Most Recent in Features:

1Raspa Revolution

2100 Ways to Draw a Line

3Homeward Bound

4The Sisterhood

5The Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Lower Pecos

Most Recent in Essay:

1Heads in the Mud

2The Day the Windows Shook

3Women’s Work

4I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

5Somewhere It Hides a Well

6Drinking the Kool-Aid at the Garden of Eden

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

2Eye on Texas: Gentrification in East Austin

3Eye on Texas: Transgender Youth in Texas

4Eye On Texas: Hurricane Harvey

5Eye on Texas: Fantastical Taxidermy

6Eye on Texas: Runners Take on 170-Mile Race in Big Bend

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

2Parallel Planes

4Poem: ‘Resistance’

5Poem: ‘Screenplay for a Homemade Movie’

6Poem: ‘To Be One with the All’

Robert Jensen

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out.

By Robert Jensen:

Stories

The Observer Review: Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

by Robert Jensen | Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:36 pm CST

Books

Reviewing The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism

Barking dogs and sinking ships: Journalism’s search for metaphor and meaning.

Thu, Mar 27, 2014 |

Texas Observer contributor and University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen reviews Dean Starkman's "The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism." Read More

"Jacob Wrestling the Angel," 1985.

Culture

Robert Jensen on Zealot and The Self Beyond Itself

Mon, Oct 14, 2013 |

In this essay, Robert Jensen explores two new books: Zealot by Reza Aslan and The Self Beyond Itself by Heidi M. Ravven. Read More

Cover Story

The Soul Seeker

A neuroscientist's search for the human essence

Thu, Jun 3, 2010 |

There’s a struggle going on inside the brain of David Eagleman for the soul of David Eagleman. That is, there might be such a struggle if Eagleman’s brain believed that Eagleman had a soul, which he is not sure about. … Read More

Archives

Media Observer

Covering the Naked Emperor

Fri, Jan 22, 1999 |

When the missiles and bombs rained down on Iraq in December, the irony was striking, and painfully obvious: to force Iraq to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions concerning weapons inspections, the United States and Great Britain violated the … Read More

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