On Monday, June 9, President Obama signed an executive order to expand the Pay As You Earn program enacted in 2010. The order extended the current system that caps monthly payments from student loan borrowers at 10 percent of their discretionary income. According to the new iteration of the program, the government will forgive the … Read more
COVERS SECTION: No Grad Left Behind?: The State of Higher Education in America Class Conflict: The debate over class-based affirmative action. By Peter Bozzo and Eric Smith. Dunce Ex Machina: U.S. high schools failing to prepare grads. By Caroline Cox and Kaiyang Huang. Tenure Tune-Up: Changes needed to modernize tenure. By Eric Hendey and Simon … Read more
A history of the world’s most dangerous weapon The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, by Richard Rhodes. Knopf Doubleday, 2010. $27.95, 384 pp. With The Making of the Atom Bomb, Richard Rhodes became America’s foremost nuclear historian, winning the 1988 Pulitzer Prize, the … Read more
Higher education as a training ground for citizenship President Obama is making education an economic issue. “When it comes to jobs, opportunity, and prosperity in the 21st century, nothing is more important than the quality of your education,” he asserted in his weekly radio address on October 9, 2010. Of course, for Obama, connecting higher … Read more
A candid look at a brutal war The Korean War: A History, by Bruce Cumings. Modern Library, 2010. $24.00, 320 pp. In June, as American troops struggled through the deadliest year yet in Afghanistan, the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War came and went with little fanfare. This might have been inevitable; … Read more
Rwanda’s hardened reformer moves forward despite growing criticism Rwanda has overcome the legacy of its horrific 1994 genocide to become one of Africa’s most successful developing nations. Elisa Nabel, a Harvard senior who spent a year in Rwanda, attested, “You can see how everyone is so eager to get the country running.” In an oft-told … Read more
Election plunges Australian politics into uncertainty After an Aug. 21 election in which neither major party in Australian politics received a majority, Julia Gillard of the Australian Labor Party managed to form the first minority government since 1940 by attracting the support of one Green parliamentarian and three independents. The incumbent center-left party led by … Read more
Addressing regional conflicts is at the heart of disarmament Throughout the 20th century, the threat of “mutually assured destruction” held nuclear war in check. Today, however, there is legitimate concern that rogue nations, reckless regimes, and international terrorists are intent on detonating a nuclear device in a major city. While many argue that disarmament is … Read more
Recent policy changes suggest a new openness towards Cuba Both Cuba and the United States have recently taken steps towards opening up relations after the half-century-long chill between the two neighbors. Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former longtime president, recently told The Atlantic, “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.” (He later retracted the statement … Read more
The midterms will leave the GOP facing a key decision for 2012 At press time, most political prognosticators give the Republicans better-than-even odds of taking control of the House of Representatives in the November elections. Regardless of the outcome, however, President Obama will likely tack towards the center to prime himself for reelection. This will … Read more