UNLV will participate in a program to find ways to create a more inclusive environment for Jewish students, the university announced this week. UNLV will join 18 other colleges and universities taking part in Hillel International’s Campus Climate Initiative.

The Rev. Kelcey West, senior pastor at Nehemiah Ministries in Las Vegas, knows when the national climate becomes stark, people often resort to invoking a higher power, finding solace in phrases like “In God we trust,” or “May God bless America.”

Recently released CIA documents revealing that the Agency surveilled Puerto Rican and Mexican American activists confirm what many of us have known for decades: that US government agencies have spied on Latinos—and probably still do.

Douglas Unger’s Dream City is the most ambitious novel ever written about Las Vegas. It’s an audacious attempt to explain what makes the city tick. Unger has taken up Tom Wolfe’s call to make research—reporting—the bedrock of a big, realistic work of fiction. The result is a novel in which Las Vegas is the main character, as much as if not more than the humans who populate the narrative.

Whether they’ve been cemented in culture since antiquity, since the turn of the 21st century or anytime in between, the traditions and symbols of Christmas, from decorated trees to the Grinch, share a DNA of identity and community.

As we march toward another new year, we put more distance between ourselves and the origins of the traditions many of us hold dear. Fruitcake, gift giving, and hanging ornaments – they’re all a blend of cultural ideas crackling aside the hearty yule log on a holiday hearth.