Ban Ki-moon’s first two years at the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has cultivated many nicknames over the course of his long and illustrious career as a diplomat. As the foreign minister of South Korea, he was called Ban-chusa, a moniker meaning both “bureaucrat” and “administrative-clerk.” His colleagues in … Read more
Jim Himes on his journey from Goldman Sachs to Capitol Hill Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) was born and lived for 10 years in Lima, Peru. He has worked at Goldman Sachs and at the New York non-profit Enterprise Community Partners. In Congress, he has worked to improve veteran benefits and increase middle-class tax cuts. Harvard … Read more
The connection between economic diversity and urban renewal Urban areas have a tendency to build upon themselves. Perhaps as long as cities have existed, they have been in the process of being ‘renewed.’ In modern urban America, the issue of renewal is intricately intertwined with the concept of gentrification, whereby the demographics of a neighborhood … Read more
How Obama will influence the genre On his posthumously released hit Changes, 2Pac rapped, “Although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to see a black president.” The song addresses problems like police violence, drug use, poverty, and the epidemic of incarceration in the black community. Blasting what he sees as the offenses of a … Read more
Should housing really come first? The idea is deceptively simple: how do you solve homelessness? By giving people homes. That is the essence of a recently developed approach to homelessness called Housing First, which inverts the traditional shelter-based approach by first providing the homeless with apartments, and then working on issues like drug addiction and … Read more
Former Secretary of Labor on the future of the work force Elaine Chao is the former United States Secretary of Labor. She served in President George W. Bush’s cabinet for both of his terms in office. The first Chinese-American person appointed to a president’s cabinet, Chao worked to improve worker protection and training during her … Read more
The importance of community-based responses to gang violence Gang violence devastates American urban life. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2000 there were over 24,000 gangs and over 700,000 gang members nationwide. The Child Trends Databank reports that almost three-quarters of teen deaths resulted from gang violence in 2002. These statistics bespeak the … Read more
Russia’s campaign against missile defense in Europe Ballistic missile defense — once derided as “Star Wars” by critics — is finally coming into its own as a major component of the geopolitical landscape in Europe. The extreme difficulty of hitting an intercontinental ballistic missile traveling at Mach 25 with a counter-missile, which experts say is … Read more
The future of urban transportation While Washington debates the economic mayhem surrounding bailouts and foreclosures, a more mundane phenomenon quietly imposes tremendous economic costs on America’s urban areas: traffic jams. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that urban traffic congestion causes a $78 billion annual drain on the economy, in the form of 4.2 billion lost … Read more
Have the FARC finally met their match? A recent string of defeats for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Latin America’s oldest, largest, and most dangerous rebel group, signals perhaps the best chance Colombia has had for peace in 44 years of armed struggle. During much of the 1990s, a drug-fueled civil war between … Read more