Following Kramer’s comments the other day, an interesting conversation has arisen that compares Kramer’s proposal to end pre-natal subsidies with China’s one child policy. The reason for this debate originates in the UN’s definition of genocide, as found in Article 2 of the Convention on the Preventment and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “In the present Convention, genocide means any ... Read More
On December 23rd, 2009, Harvard Law student Hebah M. Ismail’s ’06 landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport with the intention of joining Clinical Instructor and Global Advocacy Fellow Ahmad Amara, as well as another fellow student, for research on land disputes between the Israeli government and Bedouin communities in the Negev desert. At airport security, Ismail was interrogated for ... Read More
While I share your horror, Elise, I wish I could share your surprise. It’s hardly as though the United States (and especially the CIA) has kept its hands clean up until now. From our campaigns against Native Americans, to dropping two atomic bombs on civilians, to all the nasty and still-classified things we did in remote corners of the Third ... Read More
I think the safest and most succinct way I can react to the news that Khalid Muhammad was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 by CIA interrogators is by making a flippant pop culture reference: Even Jack Bauer wouldn’t have done it. The only other safe, mature, profanity-free reaction I can offer? Alex, here’s proof that the elites of the ... Read More
So I happened to notice the Debbie Downer note of Elise’s last post, and I wanted to focus specifically on the question of whether “it jibes with even his progressive values to stand for one set of rights at home and another one abroad.” That’s actually not a helpful way to phrase the question, for it elides the disconnect between ... Read More
Conflict in the Congo and the changing nature of violence For over ten years, an unrelenting war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has created the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. Over 5.4 million people have died since the conflict began, and millions more have suffered the depredations of the lawless Eastern Kivu region, including the systematic ... Read More
How the world can end human trafficking Some evils are hard to shake. To the surprise of many, an estimated 27 million people are currently enslaved worldwide. As a result of human trafficking, people across the globe are routinely coerced into exploitive relationships for the monetary benefit of others, often for the purpose of forced labor or prostitution. As professor ... Read More
When identity binds and borders divide Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the relative peace of Iraqi Kurdistan has been a notable, if often overlooked, exception to the violent insurgency, sectarian feuding, and pervasive lawlessness that has racked Iraq. Yet this achievement has also made the area of one of America’s most significant long-term security concerns in the ... Read More
Will and Alex have begun an interesting discussion on realist and constructivist views of “anarchy” in the international system, but I think the realist position on the ICC and other treaties could use greater elaboration. A typical realist view would be not just that some states form “persecution narratives” to oppose the United States, but that in general nation-states tend ... Read More
I was incommunicado for most of yesterday, first taking my final exam and then hustling to the airport and catching a plane back home to Chicago. So naturally, my first thought upon getting internet access last night was “Well, what has Obama done for me today?”. I was all prepared to be disappointed, and then I learn that he’s halted ... Read More
Bush, Evangelicals, and the Republican PartyBy Ray Duer ‘11 Coming on the heels of President Clinton’s scandal-ridden second term, and campaigning in 2000 as a “compassionate conservative” with the promise of a return of moral fortitude to the Oval Office, George W. Bush won the heart of one of America’s most powerful voting blocs, Protestant Evangelicals. In 2004 family values ... Read More
