James Fallows’ awesomely-titled article on the future of journalism – “Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media” – is well worth reading in full, like almost everything he writes. It’s one of those articles that validates its central thesis by virtue of its existence: Fallows is a perfect example of what the future of journalism might look like. To ... Read More
Take a look at the magazine in your hands. Ask yourself: Why bother? What can “student journalists,” those youthful folks who put this magazine together, hope to offer our world? I suspect that most campus publications, emulating their counterparts in the world of professional publishing, would prefer that this question never be asked. They might prefer that the “student” part ... Read More
Andrew Sullivan gives us his blistering take on the neoconservative legacy: [T]he neocons might be better defined as aggressive democracy-promoters who actually don’t like real democracy and constitutional checks at home. They believe – and have long believed – that Western systems cannot truly compete with dictatorships. One response to this has been the unleashing of the executive, what Harvey Mansfield calls ... Read More
It’s been a joy watching rallies erupt all across the world. From late February to early March alone, we’ve seen rallies in the Middle East, in Wisconsin, and then here at Harvard: first to preserve federal funding for AmeriCorps; then to renegotiate dining hall workers wages; then to defend “youth jobs” in MA at the State House; then to protest ... Read More
Here’s a talk I gave last semester on the subject of “What is Gov 2.0?” It begins a bit slowly; you might want skip to minute 1:30. If you like this talk, you might also enjoy this article I published in Perspective magazine on the same topic: Just as Wikipedia obviated the professional encyclopedia class, empowering amateurs to create, so too might ... Read More
Tea Party members consider themselves "workers" above all else. We've been down this road before...
Liveblogging House majority leader Eric Cantor's event at the Institute of Politics.
Cross posted from the ACE forum on Egyptian Democracy. After nearly two weeks of turmoil, it looks like Tahrir Square is starting to empty out. The Egyptian Revolution – if we can call it that – seems to be entering its inevitable second phase, the power political phase, where elites sit down at a negotiating table and wield the old ... Read More
Amy Chua’s WSJ article, ”Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” is well worth the read, if only for socio-historical reasons. The debate that it kicked off centers around the basic questions of what it means to be alive today. These questions only benefit from the the fact that they’re featured in a Rupert Murdoch publication by a woman who would reduce the great issues ... Read More
Of course our world, on balance, would be a safer place if we controlled our guns better, made them harder to acquire, harder to fire, and easier to track, etc. But in a multicausal world such as our own, we don’t actually have to choose, as Sandra does, between access to guns and political vitriol when we explain Jared Loughner’s killings; ... Read More
I’m having trouble deciding what I think about this latest scandal on the left — Obama’s appointment of Bill Daley to Chief of Staff. And I must say, to my dismay: Sandra’s piece — her first for the HPR! — did not give me many answers. Rather than argue she preferred to insinuate. Daley worked at a bank! Daley made remarks against health ... Read More
This is from George Packer’s The Fight is For Democracy: For the past century, the political philosophy of collective action on behalf of freedom and justice has been liberalism. For most of that time, it was an expansive, self-confident philosophy, and history was on its side. Since around 1968, liberalism has been an active participant in its own decline. A creed that ... Read More
The Washington Post has an OP-ED piece out that asks whether Harvard will have the “courage” to continue its ban on ROTC: It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” They can stand with those who for reasons of conscience reject ... Read More
I have two points to make in response to Alastair’s most recent post — first, that I’m happy that he wrote it, because the issue of savings and culture is very important; and second, that I’m a bit dismayed about what he wrote, because I don’t it’s actually correct. First, agreement: one of the defining stories of the coming decade will be ... Read More
In their exchanges, both Pete and Sam seem to accept the rather odd idea that affirmative action exists primarily to benefit the poor. For example, Sam writes that: Peter’s most compelling argument is that affirmative action “typically benefits only middle- and upper-class minority students”—that is, students who probably aren’t nearly as vulnerable to segregation, foreclosure, unemployment, educational inequality, and other social ... Read More
