I just finished watching Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ The Pacific, an HBO miniseries following a group of marines in WWII. And it was truly epic. Melodramatic and overwrought maybe, but the war in the Pacific was no jungle romp. As The Pacific vividly shows, it was unimaginably gruesome, traumatic, and relentless. The marines battled the unyielding and suicidal Japanese on malaria-infested, ... Read More
Sorry, Yale. No contest. I won’t go on about the nomination process, which has been covered to death. But, I just wanted to point out this particularly conspiratorial, but savvy, analysis at Above the Law about Deputy Principal Counsel (and Harvard law professor, again) Dan Meltzer: Also on Friday, Daniel Meltzer resigned as deputy principal counsel, to return to his post ... Read More
For the first time in a long time, there’s serious newspaper competition in New York—actually, newspaper competition anywhere would be newsworthy… But, New York is the big leagues. NYT vs. WSJ, fight! David Carr says: The fight bears watching for a few reasons. This is New York, a crucible of city journalism, a place that has seen newspaper wars for almost ... Read More
Our cover here was a joke, but perhaps one not too far from the truth. Bono writes today as an op-ed guest columnist in the New York Times about the “rebooting” of Africa, and in his lilting prose, he’s actually pretty right. Development economics is a contentious and irreconcilable field; there are infinitely more questions than there are answers. In ... Read More
New York Times Magazine, I know you’ve probably been working on this magnum opus on Rahm Emanuel for weeks, but I feel like this take from the New Republic was more than enough. Oh, and this. And this. But, yes, I’m a sucker and read all of them anyway. PS. And this. Photo credit: spdpurtill’s flickr.
Richard Thaler wrote an extremely important piece in the New York Times this past weekend on wireless spectrum auctions. This may sound like the stuff of fantasy or boredom, take your pick, but selling off archaic TV spectrum could net the US government $100 billion: Professor Hazlett estimates that selling off this spectrum could raise at least $100 billion for ... Read More
I hope I’m not too late to the party, but I wanted to address Sam and Kathy on Newsweek’s Harvard and religion article. They both agree that Harvard should implement a religion requirement, but a careful look at General Education’s mission reveals no room for such a requirement. In specific, I took issue with Kathy’s argumentation here: Undoubtedly for some ... Read More
We’re live tweeting Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson’s conversation in the JFK Jr. Forum. Check it out at www.twitter.com/harvardpolitics!
Valerie Jarrett wowed the JFK Jr. Forum tonight. More than a few told me that it was their favorite Forum of the year, no small feat in a year of big names: Newt Gingrich, David Axelrod, and Nancy Pelosi. But, it’s not all about political stardom. The senior adviser to the President charmed us with class and smooth talked our ... Read More
Perhaps inspired by the beauty that is our new blog, the Harvard GOP relaunched their website yesterday, giving harvardgop.org a patriotic, deeply American makeover. The new site makes heavy use of the “Ken Burns effect” with dynamic and engaging photos of Newt Gingrich standing at the front of a table. I learned from a quick browse of the site that ... Read More
Today's colleges welcome Asians with open arms—they just don't want too many of us
Perhaps I’m harping too much on this news-reading thing, but Yale is currently in a fervor over cost-cutting plans to scrap dining hall subscriptions of the New York Times. One Yalie said that he “had a slight heart attack”—and I thought having a heart attack was pretty binary—when he saw plans to terminate the $50,000-a-year subscriptions. One student wrote an ... Read More
The Economist chimed in on US-Sino relations with its cover this week, presenting a nicely balanced look at how to proceed with a resurgent and somewhat reluctant China: Rather than ganging up on China in an effort to “contain” it, the West would do better to get China to take up its share of the burden of global governance. Too ... Read More
Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic’s politics editor, just gave us a glimpse of his daily reading regime, and it surprised me. There’s an astonishing reliance on Twitter, something I’ve purposefully not used as just another source of news (I don’t want really important tweets, like what my friends had for lunch, being lost in the news shuffle). First thing in the ... Read More
