The country is being torn apart by an alarming lack of trust in institutions and ourselves. At an event last week made up of mostly strangers, I witnessed, firsthand, the divide between the faithful and the faithless. Those who largely have faith in medical science and the faithless who don’t trust much of anything the government has to say. People...

In 2005, I was speaking to a group of teachers, students, administrators and alumni at the Penn State Forum. During the Q&A that followed, one audience member asked, “if you only had five minutes to speak with the president of the United States, what would you tell him?” “Only five minutes?” I said. Even though I had not meant it...