On a snowy December night, the Harvard Undergraduate Council hosted the inauguration of James Mathew ’21 and Ifeoma White-Thorpe ’21 — the president-elect and vice president-elect of the UC. The ceremony was the main event of the evening; speeches and swearing-ins marked a celebratory, symbolic transfer of power from the UC’s previous leadership to Mathew … Read more
One of my earliest, clearest memories at Harvard is of the evening of November 8, 2016. Hundreds of first-years were packed in Annenberg Dining Hall to watch live coverage of the 2016 election, expecting what the polls predicted: a resounding victory for Hillary Clinton. Initially, Annenberg was buzzing with excitement — eight years after the … Read more
Biting wind and deep darkness make the trek across the frozen water almost unbearable. The snowmobile’s thin windshield offers little protection, and no number of garment layers provides relief from the cold. The man on the machine is soon-to-be-Governor Bill Walker, and this rigid imagery is the reality of elections in Alaska. He will soon … Read more
On April 21, 2019, a flurry of headlines, including words like “attack,” “American citizens,” and “tourists and Christians,” inundated the news feeds of people worldwide. On this Easter Sunday, suicide bombers associated with National Tawheed Jamaat, an extremist group sympathetic to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, conducted a series of coordinated attacks, killing over 290 people … Read more
The narrative that young people don’t vote is a well-worn story. In the upcoming presidential election, though, Gen Z-ers and millennials will make up one-third of the electorate, making them a formidable political force. However, young voters typically have a turnout rate 20 to 30 percentage points lower than that of older citizens. The average … Read more
There is a growing global appetite for populism. Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping have become familiar names which dominate the international political arena. In Europe, one in four voters now votes populist. Populism has become a popular alternative to mainstream politics for disgruntled voters expressing anxiety over shifting demographics, economic inequality, … Read more
In his Economics of Cities course at Harvard College, professor Ed Glaeser tells a story of environmentalism that contradicts many nature lovers’ instincts. In 1844, Henry David Thoreau, the “secular saint of environmentalism,” sought out the sanctity of the woods to celebrate nature and enjoy a campfire, but he inadvertently started a forest fire that … Read more