One point that stands out to me about the failure to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is the irrelevance of public opinion on this issue. Polls have consistently shown that DADT is extremely unpopular—clear majorities of the American people support repeal. Since DADT was introduced in 1993, it has become consistently more unpopular. Now, 57 senators voted for repeal and ... Read More
Peter Bozzo writes in today’s Crimson in favor of switching from race-based to class-based affirmative action. He makes a very strong case, but I think he ultimately goes wrong. First, his interpretation of Brown v. Board as a decision rooted in the principle of color-blindness is implausible to me. The heart of the ruling was this passage: “To separate [black ... Read More
George Will apparently wants the Supreme Court to overturn the individual mandate—the requirement that Americans purchase health insurance. As Jonathan Chait points out, Will is faced with the unenviable task of reconciling belief in judicial minimalism, which he and other conservatives have spent decades extolling, with the impulse to take advantage of their narrow Supreme Court majority. Will’s solution is ... Read More
COVERS SECTION: The Obama Doctrine: Does America Have a Foreign Policy? The Reset with Russia: Two years of “da” to a new partnership. By Joshua Lipson. Obama’s Blank Check: The tone of America’s national security policy has changed, but the substance is similar. By Peter Bozzo and Henry Shull. Remaking America’s Image: Leveraging Obama’s popularity abroad. By Beatrice Walton. A ... Read More
The HPR recently released a special online-only report examining the U.S. federal budget—the Annual Report of the United States of America (available at AnnualReportUSA.com). This report provides an accessible but comprehensive view of how the federal government spends our tax dollars. Realizing that there are a lot of misperceptions out there, we thought it would be helpful to provide citizens ... Read More
In today’s Crimson, Dylan Matthews has a provocative column arguing that Harvard ought to randomize its admissions process. Dylan claims that Harvard’s current admissions system entrenches existing inequalities—including inequalities of talent. Talent, Dylan thinks, is pretty much beyond our control. Channeling John Rawls, Dylan assumes that success in life shouldn’t be “contingent” on “arbitrary factors” like genetic gifts, parental vigilance, ... Read More
I’m not exactly known for my warm feelings towards the Harvard Crimson, but I’ll defend their decision to run an article about the allegations that are swirling around the recent Harvard Republican Club elections. (Brief summary: One of the candidates for president of that club withdrew after he was accused by another candidate of forging an email to several club ... 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 Thompson. The Public University in ... Read More
You wouldn’t know it from flipping through the magazine, which has the same old look, but there have been some new goings-on at the HPR. I want to take this opportunity to tell you about some of them. First, we have recruited a great group of regular bloggers. These 17 students have a diverse array of interests: some of them ... Read More
This column first appeared in the Harvard Independent. In the weeks before Election Day, we were besieged by polling data, breathlessly conveyed as breaking news by unimaginative journalists. This might seem rather benign, a mild diversion for political obsessives. But I’m not sure polls are quite so innocent. We either need to train a more critical eye on opinion polls ... Read More
This column originally appeared in the Oct. 14 Harvard Independent. Also see Adam’s post yesterday on this subject. This weekend I saw Davis Guggenheim’s documentary, Waiting for Superman, an arresting look at the American public education system and the lives of five precocious children whom it lets down. Guggenheim, whose previous works include An Inconvenient Truth and Barack Obama’s campaign-capping ... Read More
This column was originally published in the Sept. 30 Harvard Independent. It responds directly to Max’s blog post from the previous week. Harvard’s position on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, banning the group from campus until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) is overturned, has always struck me the wrong way. It just doesn’t make sense to punish ROTC cadets for ... Read More
In the last couple years, we at HPR have noticed a growing gender imbalance in the makeup of our staff. Of the 16 current members of the editorial board, only two are female. Among our new crop of writers, the divide is not much better: less than a third of the writers for the fall issue of the HPR will ... Read More
I was disappointed to read The Crimson’s editorial this morning regarding Martin Peretz and the Harvard research fellowship that is apparently going to be endowed in his name. Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, recently wrote on his personal blog that “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims” and that he could not “pretend that [Muslim-Americans] are worthy ... Read More
It was a little skirmish in a summer of big political battles. But the defeat of the DISCLOSE Act, a modest campaign finance reform measure pushed by President Obama and the Democrats, might have lasting importance. If Congress can’t even require transparency of the corporations that fund our elections, what hope is there of diminishing the power of money in ... Read More
