John Couretas is Director of Communications, responsible for print and online communications at the Acton Institute. He has more than 20 years of experience in news and publishing fields. He has worked as a staff writer on newspapers and magazines, covering business and government. John holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Humanities from Michigan State University and a Master of Science Degree in Journalism from Northwestern University.
Posts by John Couretas
December 21, 2018
In December, the PowerBlog is marking the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth (Dec. 11, 1918)
“Why didn’t they tell us this? I never heard this from my teachers.”
That’s the late Edward E.
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December 18, 2018
In December, the PowerBlog is marking the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth (Dec. 11, 1918)
At the
NewYork Times, Solzhenitsyn biographer Michael Scammell says the Russian novelist and historian “did more than anyone else to bring the Soviet Union to its knees.”
For his critical approach to Soviet life, Solzhenitsyn was evicted from the state-sponsored Writers’ Union and became a virtual outlaw in his own country.
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December 12, 2018
At
City Journal, Solzhenitsyn scholar Daniel J. Mahoney offers “A Centennial Tribute” marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian author’s birth. Mahoney, who holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, describes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as “the century’s greatest critic of the totalitarian immolation of liberty and human dignity.” The Russian novelist and historian was …
… a thinker and moral witness who illumined the fate of the human soul hemmed in by barbed wire in the East, and a materialist cornucopia in the West, the mature Solzhenitsyn remained remarkably faithful to the twin imperatives of courage and truth.
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December 11, 2018
On this day in 1918, Russian writer and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, to Taisia and Isaaki Solzhenitsyn, parents of peasant stock who had received a university education.
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August 30, 2018
^This is a guest post for the Acton PowerBlog.
By Gleaves Whitney
Some years ago, the bestselling biographer David McCullough outlined the “missing history” of our nation’s capital – the histories that had yet to be written.
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June 19, 2018
Rev. Ben Johnson, editor of the Acton Institute Religion & Liberty Transatlantic project, appears on the Stephen Herreid Show on YouTube to talk about his critique of First Things editor Matt Schmitz’s essay which blamed democracy and capitalism for Ireland’s repeal by referendum of its 8th Amendment, which “recognizes the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the unborn.” Latest news here.
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December 07, 2017
Alejandro A. “Alex” Chafuen, longtime president of Washington-based Atlas Network, is joining the Acton Institute on January 1 as its Managing Director, International.
“As one of our founding board members and earliest supporters, Alex has been an important part of the Acton Institute’s work and mission since day one,” said Acton Institute Executive Director Kris Mauren.
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November 21, 2017
In a survey of local charities and nonprofits in the West Michigan region, WZZM TV found that the Acton Institute topped 45 other organizations. David Bailey, an investigative reporter for the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based ABC affiliate, used data from the Charity Navigator nonprofit watchdog organization to compile his ranking.
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November 16, 2017
On October 18 2017, United States Secretary of Education and former member of the Acton Institute board of directors Betsy DeVos addressed an audience of nearly 1,000 people at Acton’s 27th Anniversary Celebration at the DeVos Place convention center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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November 03, 2017
It’s not just millennials and other young people who are souring on free markets (44 percent according to a new poll) — there’s also a growing disenchantment among some conservatives.
Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg explains the conservative angst as rooted, among other things, in the threat that upheaval in market economies presents to the “permanency, order, tradition, and strong and rooted communities.” Conservatives who advocate for free markets should take this critique seriously and “rethink about how to integrate their case for markets into the broader conservative agenda.” And who better to make this case than Edmund Burke himself:
Rather fewer people know that Burke was a committed free trader, a strong defender of private property, and a skeptic of government economic intervention.
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