On the street, in restaurants, theaters, pubs and households, one subject dominates the conversation in Scotland: the upcoming independence referendum. It has sparked more political engagement among the Scottish people than has ever been seen before. It’s an issue that is dividing families and coming between friends. On September 18, people who live in Scotland … Read more
Even sporadic readers have read works in translation. Stieg Larsson, author of the top-selling crime trilogy that began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, wrote in Swedish. Japanese author Haruki Murakami is flying off shelves. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables was long ago taken to Broadway. But as accustomed as we are to our world’s … Read more
Since the 1960s, Scotland has maintained a political leaning quite separate from England, with parties on the left receiving twice the number of votes as those on the right. On top of this trend, the increasingly neoliberal policies pouring from Westminster and the exponentially growing financial inequality in Britain signify that there is no better … Read more
Decked out in a red rain jacket embossed with ‘No’ and clutching leaflets, I stood on a front porch and said, “Have you given any thought to the referendum in September?” Almost everyone answered in the affirmative; everyone has been thinking about independence. However, the question I asked next resulted in a variety of answers: … Read more
A week ago, I emerged from the woods with nails black from dirt, hair molded with grease, and heart warm and fuzzy. Throughout the six-day pre-orientation outdoor trip for incoming Harvard students, my co-leader and I watched with nervous excitement as our ten freshmen gradually opened up to the magic of the backcountry. Deep in … Read more
By March 24, 2014, I had been embedded in the organization Divest Harvard for five weeks, and there was little sign the group was about to grow. Its members told me they’d congregated every Monday for a year in this sterile, broad-windowed room in Quincy House. Since mid-February, when I started attending, I’d seen no … Read more
After the recent outbreak of conflict in Ukraine, it has once again become fashionable for Western critics to cast suspicion upon the ideal of world peace. In a spate of responses to the growing crisis, writers argued that Vladimir Putin’s Machiavellian maneuvers made it clear that world peace is just an unattainable fantasy, and that … Read more
If states are, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, laboratories of democracy, then modern cities are laboratories of progressivism. From Baltimore to Seattle, New York City to Houston, American cities are aggressively taking on climate change, gay rights, and living wage ordinances at a time when state legislatures are sluggish and Washington is outright … Read more