The last month has seen a surge in “democratic” elections around the world. Headliners like the recent election of Dilma Rousseff in emerging Brazil, the massive midterm elections of the US, and the corrupt and violent polls in Myanmar have taken center stage, but voting in Tanzania, Cote d’Iviore, and Guinea has also taken place. … Read more
Two months ago, just when the Senkaku incident between Japan and China seemed to reach a deadlock, China played an unexpected card. Industries in Japan reported that China began halting exports of rare earth, a vital component in electronics manufacturing, a move that caused Japan to cave in. While Chinese officials have emphatically denied that … Read more
November 2nd, 2010. Election Day. It was a day that Democrats across the country drank away their sorrows as they suffered massive losses in the House (64 seats) and Senate (6 seats). Yet, even as a sea of red spread across the map, California remained blue. Democrats Jerry Brown—in the governor’s race—and Barbara Boxer—in the … Read more
My last post for this blog was an analysis of Obama on the campaign trail and the work that he was doing to ensure that Democrats across the country got elected. I assigned the President the title “Campaigner-in-Chief.” Indeed, because of Obama’s tour around the nation from coast to coast, this name was deserved due … Read more
Big picture time kids. The elections that we have been talking about and issuing predictions on for over a year are over, and the dust is beginning to settle after one of the strangest and most heated Midterm cycles of recent memory (satirized brilliantly by the Onion here). What happened is what many of us … Read more
Well, I guess I underestimated my own state’s independence. In my blog post last month about independent gubernatorial candidates in today’s political climate, I crassly proclaimed that neither Massachusetts candidate Tim Cahill nor Maine candidate Eliot Cutler (’68) were considered by voters as “practical choices.” As Tuesday’s results reveal, I correctly predicted Cahill’s inability to … Read more
This column first appeared in the Harvard Independent. In the weeks before Election Day, we were besieged by polling data, breathlessly conveyed as breaking news by unimaginative journalists. This might seem rather benign, a mild diversion for political obsessives. But I’m not sure polls are quite so innocent. We either need to train a more … Read more
Rwanda’s hardened reformer moves forward despite growing criticism Rwanda has overcome the legacy of its horrific 1994 genocide to become one of Africa’s most successful developing nations. Elisa Nabel, a Harvard senior who spent a year in Rwanda, attested, “You can see how everyone is so eager to get the country running.” In an oft-told … Read more
Religious plurality comes in many shapes and sizes. Take the case of Israel, often dismissed by foreign observers as simply ‘the Jewish state’. The lion’s share of international focus on Israel stems from conflict between the Jewish majority and an Arab minority. Yet outside mixed-ethnic areas like Jerusalem and the Upper Galilee, most Israelis don’t … Read more
Immediately following the midterm elections, newspaper headlines from around the world told the tale of an American president embarrassingly “defeated” and “apologetic” of his presidency thus far. From titles such as “No We Can’t” in the Kuwait Times to “Obama Admits He Needs ‘to Do a Better Job’ After Election Beating” in the London Guardian,to … Read more