Paul Schied and I discuss Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and whether Harvard students can be Tea Party members. Harvard Blogging Heads: Paul Schied and Max Novendstern from Max Novendstern on Vimeo. (Paul is great; I’m a bit boring. They will get better! If anyone watching this is interested in doing a Harvard Blogging … Read more
Just two weeks ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed regret for breaking election pledges on child benefits and university fees. The Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition had recently announced the end to universality of child benefit welfare programmes, meaning that higher- and even middle-income families will soon be excluded from these benefits. The surprising thing is not … Read more
Last week, I wrote a Crimson blog post about the Harvard alumni who ran for governor. Since then, I’ve gotten in touch with a few of the candidates, to hear their thoughts on the election. Frank Caprio (Class of ’88) was the Democratic nominee in the Rhode Island gubernatorial race. During the race, Caprio caused quite … Read more
This week there have been many reports about the change in the troop withdrawal date. The New York Times reported that the Obama administration is changing its policy to include a withdrawal period at the end of 2014. This month, senior White House officials have cited 2014 as the new transfer date. Such an announcement … Read more
COVERS SECTION: No Grad Left Behind?: The State of Higher Education in America Class Conflict: The debate over class-based affirmative action. By Peter Bozzo and Eric Smith. Dunce Ex Machina: U.S. high schools failing to prepare grads. By Caroline Cox and Kaiyang Huang. Tenure Tune-Up: Changes needed to modernize tenure. By Eric Hendey and Simon … Read more
A journalist’s search for purpose in a murky war Every Man in This Village is a Liar: An Education in War, by Megan K. Stack. Knopf Doubleday, 2010. $26.95, 257 pp. Americans, most of whom are not at war in any meaningful sense, are somehow war-weary from a decade of violence that is totally distant … Read more
A thoughtful meditation on East and West Somebody Else’s Century: East and West in a Post-Western World, by Patrick Smith. Pantheon Books, 2010. $25.95, 242 pp. “This is not a useful book in the way we ordinarily think of one,” Patrick Smith tells us at the beginning of Somebody Else’s Century. Forgoing the economic forecasting … Read more
A history of the world’s most dangerous weapon The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, by Richard Rhodes. Knopf Doubleday, 2010. $27.95, 384 pp. With The Making of the Atom Bomb, Richard Rhodes became America’s foremost nuclear historian, winning the 1988 Pulitzer Prize, the … Read more
Higher education as a training ground for citizenship President Obama is making education an economic issue. “When it comes to jobs, opportunity, and prosperity in the 21st century, nothing is more important than the quality of your education,” he asserted in his weekly radio address on October 9, 2010. Of course, for Obama, connecting higher … Read more
A candid look at a brutal war The Korean War: A History, by Bruce Cumings. Modern Library, 2010. $24.00, 320 pp. In June, as American troops struggled through the deadliest year yet in Afghanistan, the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War came and went with little fanfare. This might have been inevitable; … Read more