2023
September
13
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 13, 2023
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Ira Porter
Education Writer

​​I learned a cliché a long time ago: Everybody loves a winner.

Deion Sanders is a winner. As a college and professional athlete, he was the ultimate showman – “Prime Time.” He remains the only athlete ever to play in both the Super Bowl and the World Series.

Yet what he is doing now as the head football coach of the University of Colorado Buffaloes has shocked the world. Doubters questioned whether he was over his head in taking on a team that finished last season 1-11. News flash, two games into this season, it has already surpassed that mark.

In winning their first two games, the Buffaloes have even beaten the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs, which played in last season’s national championship game. The other game was a demolition of the once-proud Nebraska Cornhuskers. That’s how good they are.

“Ain’t none of y’all believe. Maybe a couple of y’all who knew how I get down. I’m a winner. I am going to win. Now what?” Coach Prime asked. 

I love it. And the winning doesn’t stop there. The team he coached the previous three years – the Jackson State University Tigers – is winning its division. The culture Coach Prime instilled is still strong. Another win for him.

Finally, he recently spoke about going back to school to get his degree at Talladega College in Alabama – like Jackson State, a historically Black college. And to think, people thought him leaving Jackson State was a sign of him abandoning historically Black colleges and universities. Congratulations Colorado, Jackson State, and Talladega College. Congratulations HBCUs. And congratulations Coach Prime.

He told everyone that wherever he goes he wins. And yes, winning matters. But the way he’s doing it matters, too. Along the way, he’s lifting every community he touches.


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Israelis demonstrate against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system and in support of the Supreme Court, in Jerusalem, Sept. 11, 2023.

The issue of the balance of power between Israel’s judicial and legislative branches is now before the very Supreme Court justices whose authority the government is seeking to curtail, with arguments invoking the country’s core democratic values.

Vladimir Putin is often accused of trying to restore the old Soviet Union. But his meeting with Kim Jong Un suggests he might be focusing on restoring ties with like-minded former Soviet allies instead.

Monitor Breakfast

Between falling test scores in K-12 and rising debt for college students, the challenges facing the U.S. education system this school year are profound. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona weighs in on the current landscape.

Nacho Doce/Reuters
Milouda Lemniai uses a towel to protect herself from the sun in a camp for earthquake survivors in Asni, Morocco, Sept. 13, 2023.

Aid donors often attach political conditions to their assistance. It is rare, though, for an aid recipient to reject help on political grounds. That is what Morocco seems to be doing in the wake of its recent earthquake.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Essay

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Students work on their letters at Bagnall Elementary School in Groveland, Massachusetts, in 2002.

In an era of instant gratification and fleeting pleasures, it’s easy to overlook the simple satisfaction that can be found in mastering foundational skills. 


The Monitor's View

Sudden tragedies like the catastrophic flooding in Libya this week uniquely reveal humanity’s ability to turn just as suddenly from apparently intractable conflict to unity and compassion.

For more than a decade, Libya has been riven by split government, warring factions, Islamist extremists, and foreign countries competing for resources and patronage. Now many of those same parties are joining in response to a disaster that has claimed at least 6,000 lives and displaced an estimated 20,000 others.

Assistance is pouring into the affected areas from towns across Libya as quickly as people can arrive. Airlifts of supplies and personnel are coming from countries and relief agencies across the Middle East. The United States and European Union have pledged additional support.

“We haven’t seen this type of unity for many years here in the country,” Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina reported. “We’re seeing also now volunteers and people giving whatever they can – water, food, medicine, whatever supplies they can.”

The rapid influx of relief aid and rescue support from friend and foe may prove salutary beyond meeting the immediate humanitarian needs. It illustrates a capacity for shared concerns at a time when Libya’s two rival and at-times warring governments are exploring proposals for stitching their country back together under a transitional unity government.

Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, the leader of Libya’s internationally recognized government based in Tripoli in the west, declared on Tuesday that the country’s divisions “will not prevent us from helping you, and we will not fail to perform our duties toward you.” His government has earmarked millions of dollars in recovery funds and has begun airlifting emergency resources to the east, where the Mediterranean city of Derna and dozens of smaller flood-affected coastal towns fall under Libya’s rival administration.

His goodwill drew a healing reply. “We are one country,” said Abdulhadi Lhweej, foreign minister of the eastern government. “We welcome them.”

The disaster underscores the cost of Libya’s divided governance. When the weekend storm dropped as much as 9 1/2 inches of rain in under 24 hours, it exposed the country’s lack of emergency preparedness and the state of its neglected infrastructure. Two dams south of Derna failed. More than 20% of the city washed away in the wall of water. Residents report having had little or no warning. 

Now the unity and compassion flowing into Derna from across Libya opens a new opportunity for national renewal. “Given that Libya has been divided into two rival administrations in the east and west” for almost a decade, wrote Sansom Milton, a professor at Qatar’s Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, in Middle East Eye today, “this unity in the face of disaster could later be capitalised ... to foster reconciliation.” That requires “work towards restoring public trust.”


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

At times unhelpful modes of thought, such as self-justification or fear, can feel pretty entrenched. But willingness to consider a broader, spiritual perspective brings goodness and freedom into our experience.


Viewfinder

Sue Ogrocki/AP
Monarch butterflies migrating from Canada stop to rest in Wendy Park in Cleveland on their way to Mexico, Sept. 12, 2023. Scientists around the United States track the butterflies' migration routes each year, as well as where they pick up nectar and rest along the way. Some butterflies are tagged with tiny devices that will ping their location. The vibrant species also attracts thousands of enthusiastic butterfly-watchers during the annual migration.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

You’ve come to the end of today’s Daily. We hope you’ll come back tomorrow for Ned Temko’s latest Patterns column. Amid talk of a mega-Mideast peace deal between the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, it is worth remembering that the two-state Oslo peace plan remains the only realistic one.

More issues

2023
September
13
Wednesday

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