Last weekend, Harvard’s Model United Nations conference for college students took place for the 56th time, drawing thousands of students from all over the world to Boston Park Plaza. As an uber-important (or not) Assistant Director to the E.U. committee, I got to observe first hand how students acted as delegates from countries they didn’t come from and to debate [...]
I’m glad to see my Crimson column of October 18 is still getting some attention! I had written that discrimination against atheists, both in the legal arena and in the popular mind, is a serious problem — not the biggest problem in the world, but a problem worth noting and criticizing. In his critique of that column, the Harvard Salient’s [...]
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 [...]
Here’s the deal: if Martha Coakley loses tonight then it’s good news for Lloyd Blankfein, who’s worried about financial regulation reform, for the super rich, whose taxes will remain low, and for everyone generally interested in preventing Obama from governing this country. On the other hand, her loss is bad news for those of us who care about adequate health [...]
The question is not intended substantively. The bill that is being debated by the Senate is an ugly mess from the perspective of any reasonable observer, left, right, or center. However, as inefficient and messy as it is, it will still do a much better job than the status quo of providing healthcare to the people in the country who [...]
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 the ministry praised him for [...]
Yesterday Richard Garwin spoke in the Science Center about the role of nuclear energy in the country’s energy future, and I was once again amazed at how clearly the numbers demonstrate our nation’s strong need for nuclear energy. If we want to stem global warming and continue to grow our economy at a strong pace by continuing to provide low-cost [...]
Every time I read a strategy memo for the next Republican party, I panic a little. It’s a sudden fear – oh no, what if they figure it out this time? – that quickly subsides, because usually the argument is poor enough that the party to which I happen to be illogically loyal has little to fear. But when intelligent [...]
Confronting global challenges in a more interconnected world “A wise man’s country is the world,” Aristippus, an ancient Greek philosopher, once said. Many others have since echoed his sentiment that individuals ought to identify with broader humanity rather than with nations. In more recent decades, astronauts have joined this chorus, suggesting that a world without borders is not an aspiration [...]
Managing the global resource of water “The next world war will be over water,” the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ismail Serageldin, once proclaimed. The very nature of water as a natural resource lends itself to conflict — it is a universal necessity, and often flows from sovereignty to sovereignty, defying ownership. Considering these circumstances, combined with increasing [...]
The future of the WTO and the Doha trade round July 29, 2008 witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round, high-level negotiations aimed at lowering trade barriers between countries. Immediate reactions were varied, reflecting international ambivalence about globalization. Free traders viewed the collapse as a disaster, poverty activists as a moral failure, and globalization’s malcontents as a [...]
The struggle to forge a successor to the Kyoto Protocol “Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible,” warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 report. This dire prophecy concerns the whole world; while developing nations are perhaps most at risk due to their limited adaptive capacities, all countries could suffer a lowered [...]
Historic challenges await America's new leader
The need to balance food aid with long-term agricultural investment
