Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller is a domestic correspondent for the New York Times. She is a former contributing editor to New York magazine, the former religion columnist for the Washington Post, and former senior editor of Newsweek magazine. She is the author of “Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife" and a co-author of "Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC."

The New Sandy Hook Elementary Is Meant to Be a Fresh Start, But It Still Evokes Tragedy

Since December 14, 2012, Newtown, Connecticut, has had a prickly relationship with the press. So many camera trucks swamped the narrow, hilly roads in the hours after the mass shooting there — where 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School were killed — that for weeks even longtime residents didn’t recognize their […]

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Is Pre-K Broken?

Photo: Julie Blackmon The best government-pre-K classrooms don’t resemble remedial education designed to bring impoverished 3-year-olds up to speed; they look like the progressive places most rich Americans have been sending their kids to for generations. It’s easy to see why “universal pre-K” has become the calling card of so many Democratic politicians. Because, really,

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Slender Man is Watching

From top: Morgan Geyser being questioned by detective Tom Casey, and Anissa Weier by detective Michelle Trussoni, in the Waukesha police station, May 31, 2014. If 12-year-olds Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser knew that the internet character they worshipped was a fantasy, why did they want to kill their friend for him? Video stills and

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Can Racism Be Stopped in the Third Grade?

The form arrived in an email attachment on the Friday after winter break.“What is your race?”it asked. And then, beneath that, a Census-style list: “African-American/Black,” “Asian/Pacific Islander,” “Latina/o,” “Multi-racial,” “White,”   and “Not sure.” The email, signed by the principal of Fieldston Lower School, urged parents to talk about these categories with their children at home because the

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