The best thing ever written about Facebook was probably a single line in Lawrence Lessig’s review of The Social Network: “What’s important here,” Lessig says, in his characteristically vehement way, “is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) … Read more
Several weeks ago, a columnist for The Harvard Crimson announced that he’s sick of hearing other students blather on about their political opinions. “It requires a truly astonishing degree of presumptuousness,” Dhruv Singhal wrote, “for someone to believe that their particular insights on the appropriate balance between the cause of social justice and the prudence … Read more
Why Marx Was Right, by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press, 2011. $25.00, 272 pp. “You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism,” writes Terry Eagleton in the preface to his new book, Why Marx Was Right. Eagleton is a literary theorist and an English professor at the … Read more
Harvard Political Review: President Obama recently announced that the United States would cut oil imports by one-third before 2025. Is his energy plan ambitious enough? Bill Richardson: It’s not ambitious enough, but it’s politically realistic. I believe it’s the best we can do under the present Congress and the mood of the country. My hope … Read more
As an oft-static region of the world erupted in protests this past winter and spring, onlookers might have had fair reason to ask what had changed. Hosni Mubarak had ruled Egypt since 1981, his party undefeated since its founding. Yet in a matter of weeks, the “Pharaoh-for-Life” relinquished office, a man without supporters. Even more … Read more
The revolution was the easy part. In the wake of the various governmental transitions in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and other nations across the Middle East, the idea of democracy in the region is once more in full swing. With the death of the traditional autocracies, reformers dream of a new wave of representative, constitutional government. … Read more
The idea that demand for oil may affect American foreign policy is neither a new nor particularly novel thesis. Many commentators from Pat Buchanan to Thomas Friedman have argued that the United States counteracts its own interests through its purchases from authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Less examined, but equally potent, however, may be … Read more
Democracy is a messy business. As the ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East illustrate, the pendulum of social upheaval often swings wildly and in unpredictable directions. Since 2006, Thailand has found itself in the throes of political uncertainty, punctuated by outbreaks of anti-government protests and violent repression. The pattern may seem deserving of a “revolutionary” … Read more
As citizens and policymakers alike wait to see where the 2011 Egyptian revolution will head, the anxiety may come with understandable sense of déjà-vu. Some 59 years ago, in fact, British colonialists faced similar turmoil, following a 1952 coup in which the Free Officers, a group of junior military officers led by Gamal Nasser, deposed … Read more