New Feminism in Iran
The Middle East’s most tumultuous women’s rights movement
On the Newsstand:Iran
Prophetic Words at Harvard for China’s Policies
A look at China's foreign policy in the Middle East.
Helping Iran’s Condemned
What hand-wringing westerners can do about the unjust sentence for Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr.
To Turkey through Palestine
Sam Finegold explores the future of US relations with Turkey and Palestine
Babbling Towards Beirut: Lebanon Undone
Upon coming to from a nitrous oxide-induced coma this Monday, my dental surgeon told me that I’d been babbling endlessly about Lebanon as my wisdom teeth met their end. Such is the life of a Middle East political columnist. Any other week, this anecdote would have been fruitless. I don’t pontificate about Lebanon all that often. But by an unfortunate ... Read More
Cold Turkey?
By the conventional wisdom of the day, Turkey is hot. While America is caricatured as ‘empire on the decline’, Europe as ‘the shrinking continent’, and Iran as ‘menace in the Middle East’, Turkey has swept the world stage as a posterchild of win-win international politics. To its credit, this quasi-European, quasi-Middle Eastern regional bridge state has been able to do ... Read More
Retroactive Diary of Qureshi Forum
Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, foreign minister of Pakistan, at the Institute of Politics
Racial discrimination in jury selection still widespread
Thinking about my post from last night, I realized how strange you might think me for assuming that there’s greater risk to liberty from police and prosecutors misbehaving than there is from letting a certain number of criminals get off on “technicalities.” Thankfully, with impeccable timing, we got this report today from the New York Times, summarizing a study by ... Read More
The New Miranda Decision and Souter’s Harvard Speech
With the predictable 5-4 lineup, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that, in order to exclude from evidence incriminating statements to the police, criminal suspects must have unambiguously invoked their right to remain silent. The case essentially asked, what constitutes a waiver of one’s Miranda rights? Does sitting silent, unresponsive, for nearly three hours, as did the suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, ... Read More
Young Liberal American Jewish Zionism
In his recent essay “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” Peter Beinart laments the disconnect young liberal American Jews feel from Israel and the American organizations that support it (i.e. AIPAC). He argues that Zionist organizations have moved rightward with the Israeli government and have largely shut out liberal dissent: “…by defending virtually anything any Israeli government does, they ... Read More
Barack on the ball, and on the oil
This week’s big environmental news, namely that President Obama has authorized major offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska, may not be popular with the left but it’s hardly a surprising move, or a necessarily wrong decision. Although he long opposed (and still does oppose) drilling for oil in Alaska’s spectacular Bristol Bay, Obama has consistently been ... Read More
Harvard Model UN: Self-congratulations or a glimpse at how the world could be run?
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 ... Read More
