In 2010, the Wisconsin legislature ground to a standstill as Democratic senators fled the state to stall a change in collective bargaining laws. Partisan tensions ran so high that voters successfully petitioned for ten recall elections, a record in American politics. Over seventy percent of the congresspersons serving at that time are still in office, … Read more
“When you’re 20,” Margaret Atwood tells me, “you think you’re going to die at 30. You don’t know the plot yet.” A world-famous writer renowned for her dark tales and acerbic wit, Atwood is wonderfully warm in person. The most recent addition to her many awards is the Harvard Arts Medal, granted on May 1 … Read more
The practice of protesting commencement speakers is nothing new, but rarely in recent memory have these protests been as widespread and as solicitous of public attention as they have been this spring. It all started April 8, when administrators at Brandeis University, acting under pressure from undergraduates and faculty members, rescinded a commencement invitation to Ayaan … Read more
This past year saw shootings at UC Santa Barbara and Purdue, bomb threats at Princeton and Harvard, and the Boston Marathon bombings in a metro area home to more than 60 institutions of higher learning. Administrators are trained to act quickly and thoroughly during these types of events in order to ensure that the relevant constituencies … Read more
Arcade Fire’s recently released video for single “We Exist,” has achieved significant buzz for Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of a “young person’s struggle with gender identity.” Win Butler has said in several statements that the lyrics of the song describe a gay son’s attempts to come out to his father, and here they are repurposed … Read more
In October 2013, the Swiss People’s Party proposed a referendum to implement immigration quotas. Embodying anti-immigration and anti-E.U. sentiments that contradict the traditionally pro-immigration European Union, the Swiss People’s Party cites Switzerland’s inability to maintain its influxes of immigrants as justification for the measure. More specifically, supporters of the Swiss People’s Party harbor growing concerns … Read more
Citizenship reform has been a top priority of the German legislature since it took office in September 2013. Talks among the governing coalition have been ongoing in the six months since its election, though no laws have passed yet. The outcome of the debate, which has largely focused on dual citizenship provisions, will particularly affect … Read more
Selina Wang goes out to the Boston Marathon to interview participants as they “take back the finish line” one year after the tragic bombing. You can access additional content by subscribing to our YouTube channel and visiting our iTunes page. Interview, Filming and Editing by Selina Wang
In the early 1990s, Argentina began a strong push toward neoliberal reform, drawing praise from the economic ideology’s proponents worldwide. This move precipitated the depreciation of the peso against the U.S. dollar, as well as defaults on massive debts to the International Monetary Fund, all culminating in an economic crisis in 2001. The crisis pushed … Read more
“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” This is nation-state building according to Frank Zappa. It could well be that he was right: what … Read more