Few industries worth almost $10 billion are illegal under federal law. Fewer still operate out of giant dispensaries that sleekly advertise their extensive selections, or state-of-the-art cultivation processes, in open sight of passersby. But we live in a new age: the age of recreational marijuana. 2018 will be a telling year for the future of … Read more
Recent shifts in the upper echelons of Chinese leadership have attracted international attention. Chinese President Xi Jinping became the first leader since Chairman Mao Zedong to be addressed with the honorary “lingxiu,” or revered leader. He was also named “the core” of the Chinese Communist Party and his political philosophy was entered into the Chinese … Read more
The debate over school choice and charter schools has grown ever more contentious since Betsy DeVos assumed office last year. Many of the charter schools in DeVos’s home state of Michigan are alleged to be plagued by corruption, and her proposals surrounding school vouchers and school choice have provoked outrage among American voters. Despite the … Read more
2017: The Year of the Far Right 2017 was, in many ways, a year of extremes—while the left celebrated events like the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement, which allowed historically marginalized voices to be heard, members of the far right also gained a new level of influence and attention. With events like the … Read more
The word infrastructure is rarely associated with beauty. ‘Infrastructure’ connotes a bureaucratic and unpleasant world, one that is riddled with the anxieties of contemporary urban life. The concrete structures that house our day to day lives become lost amidst blazing sirens and ceaseless streams of activity. The beauty in the world we’ve created is forgotten. … Read more
The 2016 election has been described as showing signs of a political realignment: many white, working class Democrats, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast, crossed over and voted for Trump, while more educated, affluent white Republicans in major cities and suburbs defected and voted for Clinton. For years, both parties had championed the idea of … Read more
Ann Kalayil is the Co-Founder, President, and Board Chair of the South Asian American Policy and Research Institute (SAAPRI) and was appointed by President Barack Obama as a Regional Administrator of the General Services Administration. She currently serves as the Bureau Chief of Asset Management at the Cook County Government in Illinois. Harvard Political Review: … Read more
Somehow, in the middle of the day, on our way to the Peabody Museum, we got lost. We travelled amidst a sea of indistinguishable red brick buildings, adorned with familiar names (Lowell, Agassiz, Bauer), and nestled in an expanse of endless lawns. We were only a few blocks from the main campus—the occasional map or … Read more
When Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, he was hailed as the nation’s “first black president.” Two years later, as he filled out his census, Obama checked off the “Black, African Am., or Negro” box, confirming his historic label. The catch? Barack Obama is the product of a white mother and a Kenyan father. … Read more
On August 12, 2017, James Alex Fields Jr. drove his Dodge Charger into a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. One woman was killed and 19 others were injured. Despite President Trump’s lukewarm rebuttal of the violence, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, along with nearly every major politician, recognized the tragedy as an act of … Read more