Leppert Commentary: Purdue’s breakup with its student paper shows need to protect truth telling
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen June 11, 2025 I am working on publishing a new book this year. So, I’m spending time with other writers, readers, editors and consultants to make sure the finished product is as good as it can be. While online the other day, an editor wrot “...”
Leppert Commentary: Lt. Gov. Beckwith’s nasty warnings about Pride Month are exactly why Pride is needed
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen June 4, 2025 I love June in Indianapolis. School’s out for me. The gardens, flowers and lawns around town are blooming and greening with optimism. And the city is quiet as it recovers from its traditionally hectic month of May. As my favor “...”
Leppert Commentary: When knowledge is the enemy, greatness is impossible
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen May 28, 2025 In the 1983 classic film, “Trading Places,” Louis Winthorpe III and Billy Ray Valentine are victims of a scientific experiment that is thrust upon them by the elite bosses of a Philadelphia commodities brokerage. Winthorpe i “...”
Leppert Commentary: Braun fails Indiana’s hungry, and the buck stops somewhere else
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen May 21, 2025 Bureaucracy is a word that is often used as an excuse. It is the bogeyman that serves as the source of mysterious and insurmountable odds preventing government from delivering the obvious good and right things to its people. Why “...”
Leppert Commentary: ‘The Talk’ won’t get us through the evil of ICE’s mask-wearing
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen May 14, 2025 In the opening scene of the film, “The Hate U Give,” a father is having The Talk with his two young children. It is a common discussion Black families have in America to prepare for the inevitable contact with law enforcemen “...”
Leppert Commentary: Graduation comes so fast we don’t have time for pretending
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen May 7, 2025 In “Mother Night,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” I might add: “And for how long.” I was invited to join a small group of students last week to “...”
Leppert Commentary: Stories endangering women and civil rights are like ships passing in the night
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen April 30, 2025 Since the measure was first coined by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the “First 100 Days” is the standard we exclusively give new presidents “as a symbolic window to set the tone” of their administration. “It “...”
Leppert Commentary: Tariff madness is hanging Indiana, no matter how Braun spins it
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen April 23, 2025 I have often wondered where the phrase “spinning a yarn” came from, and what differentiates the descriptive from the blunter, “making stuff up.” This week’s absurd spin, courtesy of Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, finally i “...”
Leppert Commentary: Nobody is safe in America, not from America, not anymore
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen April 16, 2025 “Bridge of Spies” is a 2015 movie about an insurance attorney, James Donovan, who finds himself representing a Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel, in a highly publicized espionage trial in 1957. Yes, it’s directed by Steve “...”
Leppert Commentary: Jim Banks’ mad handing is no coincidence; it’s a modern, political aspiration
By Michael Leppert The Indiana Citizen April 9, 2025 The term “glad handing” appeared in the American vernacular at the beginning of the 20th century, through the phrase, “to give the glad hand,” or extend a welcome. But that type of welcome has generally come with a twis “...”