The Suitability of American Politics
Fashion's place in political reporting
On the Newsstand:Feminism
Beit Shemesh, Misogyny, and Building a Jewish Democracy
Neither the ultra-Orthodox nor the secular sector in Israel is innocent of gender discrimination.
Strauss-Kahn, NYPD, and How We Think About Sexual Assault
Recent cases underline the deep and disturbing fallacies in the way we think about and prosecute rape.
On Being a Feminist in Russia
Are Russian women subject to patriarchal cultural expectations, or simply following a set of harmless social conventions?
The Gender Imbalance in Campus Opinion/Political Media
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
Are payday loans like unprotected sex?
Sometimes you read a Tyler Cowen post and you think to yourself, simply: Did he really just say that? Here’s Cowen on payday loans and unprotected sex: The unprotected sex is riskier and less prudent than borrowing money at an annualized rate of two hundred percent. Why prohibit one and not the other? Many of the borrowers are being fooled, ... Read More
Conservative Feminism: Oxymoron?
One of the many trends in this midterm election cycle, recognized and promoted by those whose job it is to recognize and promote trends, is that 2010 appears to be the “Year of the Woman.” Sharron Angle won her primary for the Nevada Senate race. Nikki Haley, with headline-making help from Sarah Palin, won her runoff primary for South Carolina ... Read More
Weighing In: Manliness, A Bad Word for a Good Thing
In his essay “What Makes A Life Significant,” William James gives voice to the “manly virtues” that Wagley, in her “Defense of Manliness,” seems to want to defend. I say “seems” because, like Sam, I’m not exactly sure what her article is advocating for. If it’s anything like what James wanted when he called for a life of “precipitousness, so ... Read More
An Assault on the Defense of Manliness
Sometimes the only way to properly criticize someone with ridiculous views is to quote them at length, and then, channeling Seth and Amy from “Saturday Night Live,” say with as much surprise and disdain as one can muster, “Really?!” I found myself saying “Really?!” a lot this morning when I read Rachel Wagley’s “defense of manliness” in the Harvard Crimson. ... Read More
Half the Sky
Last week was slavery week on the HPRgument (apparently!). We talked about “intern slavery,” twice, and then American slavery. But what about today? Slavery of course is still a very real problem; in absolute terms, by every estimate, there are more slaves today than there ever were in history, and the trade of human lives is more active and more hazardous ... Read More
Do Democrats Need to Get Religion?
Raul Carrillo has a column in today’s Crimson arguing that Democrats need to become better at the “politics of spirituality.” Such exhortations often contain an ambiguity, and Carillo’s is no exception. Is he criticizing liberals on substantive grounds, i.e. for their support for separation of church and state and their “neutral stance on issues of faith”? Or is he just ... Read More
Rape Is Not Ambiguous
NPR News has an excellent article up this week on the persistence of rape and sexual violence on college campuses. In honor of Women’s Week and “Feminist Coming Out Day” here at Harvard, I thought I’d make a few comments: There’s a common assumption about men who commit sexual assault on a college campus: That they made a one-time, bad ... Read More
After Woodstock
Protest music for a new generation The anniversary of Woodstock has come and gone, and with it scores of revitalized folk records and overused tie-dye designs. Many years have passed since the anti-Vietnam movement flooded the streets of America, and time has brought international conflict, economic downturns, and changes in the ideology of our political leaders. The question left in ... Read More
