Simone de Beauvoir argued in her 1949 book “The Second Sex” that “humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.”

There’s an intimacy in the way people experience borders,” says Amy Reed-Sandoval, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Borders help shape people’s identities . I once spoke to a woman who had traveled from Canada to New Mexico for an abortion. It was a horrible situation where the baby wouldn’t survive the birth. Because of the controversy surrounding abortion in the United States, she was afraid of being questioned at the border and sent back. She said afterward that the fear of the imaginary border agent had robbed her of the opportunity to grieve for her unborn child. The border changed this woman’s feelings and her life story.”

Combining the education of children with that of future professionals is the perfect combination for the practice of UNLV philosophy students who have a joint preschool program on campus where they encourage children under 5 years old to do or think about big questions and interact with the world around them daily.

In 1988, author and women’s studies professor Evelyn Torton Beck published an article entitled “The Politics of Jewish Invisibility” in which she lamented “the silence surrounding the recognition that anti-Semitism, whose shadow continues to fall on women’s lives, is, or ought to be, a feminist issue.”

There is a science to hope. We look at how this weighs into mental health, and the efforts to make Las Vegas a “hopeful” city. We then meet Egyptian author Ahmed Naji, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He shares his experiences being imprisoned for his writings, and how he found a new life at UNLV.

The invitation says no children, and where my children aren’t welcome, I’m not either.