One Tuesday in October, eleven years ago, Lowell House announced its dining hall would be open 24 hours a day. On Wednesday, the space was damaged. The mess was not unexpected, but it was certainly dismaying to administrators and students hoping to create social study space in the heart of a campus home. More than … Read more
Hilda Solis served as the United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 through 2013. She is currently a scholar in residence at her alma mater, Cal Poly Pomona. Harvard Political Review: The Wall Street Journal reported that American job recovery exists on two tracks, with the lowest-paying jobs lagging behind the highest-paying ones. Do you … Read more
The unrest that dethroned Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and his administration in 2012 has marred the country for the past two years, generating a stream of conflicts involving the military, the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and Islamic fundamentalist groups. Several towns have been taken over by combatants, who in … Read more
One hundred and sixty years ago, the United States made a bold and fundamental alteration to the structure of its currency by eliminating the half-cent. Ever since, the basic denominations with which we exchange goods and services have been more or less constant. Meanwhile, inflation has drastically altered purchasing power to the point that today’s dime … Read more
The prologue of Telex From Cuba, published in 2008, opens with a young girl, Everly Lederer, fascinated by the notion of a physical boundary, the Tropic of Cancer, represented as a simple line on her globe. With her unconstrained imagination, “she pictured daisy chains of seaweed stretching across the water toward a distant horizon.” When … Read more
For most of the 20th century, changes in the music industry were limited to hardware. The gramophone became the record player, which eventually became the hi-fi and later, the at-the-time revolutionary CD. The biggest labels dominated the industry, supervising the mass dissemination and release of albums in an age of limited media. Like a venture … Read more
In the spring of 1994, South Africa overcame mountainous obstacles to end apartheid and elect Nelson Mandela as its first black president. Twenty years later, it’s facing many more challenges, this time without the leadership of the man who united and healed a nation bitterly divided. Mandela left behind a legacy of democracy that in … Read more
George Watsky goes all in. Though far from a household name, he sells his music, tours the nation, and is surviving on his art. The 27-year-old California native is part of a generation of YouTube stars who use the website as a platform to spread their messages. Google’s partnership with AdSense, and the creation of … Read more
Demonstrations are the physical representation of the will of a group of people, a show of force by those whom the world might see as peripheral. Yet, for all the muscle that a protest may exhibit, lasting impact comes from something more intangible, something that strikes a chord and resonates with all those involved. This … Read more
“We will not stop until we have a revolution!” yelled several protestors, collected in Piazza Castello in Turin, Italy. It was December 9, 2013 and the movement known as “I Forconi” (the Pitchforks) was at the peak of its strength, paralyzing many Italian freeways, commercial centers, and other strategic hotspots. With leafleting, demonstrations, and violence, … Read more