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.
Post Tagged with: "Rape"
Rand Paul a Racist? I Think Not.
Sam Barr’s most recent post makes the rather shocking claim that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky being vacated by the retiring Jim Bunning, is a racist, or at least that he is not a non-racist. Sam deduces this from the fact that Mr. Paul is not a “consistent libertarian,” that he “picks and [...]
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. [...]
E.U.: Vacationing a Human Right
In a bold step intended to reduce poverty, the European Union will soon be providing some of the Continent’s poorest citizens with subsidized plane tickets and hotel rooms. The Toronto-based National Post reported on Monday that the European Union has declared traveling for tourism a human right, and is launching a scheme to subsidize vacations with taxpayer money for those [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
From the Editor
When the HPR selected Urban America as the summer covers topic, I immediately cautioned our Covers Editor that the section could not just be a feature on New York. Given that she is from Boston my worries were probably unfounded, but people do love talking about New York, and I can understand why. The Big Apple is home to over [...]
Big Aspirations, Smaller Results
How much have Texan oilmen shaped America? Reporter Brian Burrough follows his last corporate epic, Barbarians at the Gate, with a new book, The Big Rich, replacing skyscrapers and three piece suits with oil wells and Stetson hats. It is a sprawling story set across several continents, chronicling gumption, love, betrayal, politics, family squabbles, and Muammar al-Gaddafi. But if the [...]
More Secretary than General?
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 [...]
The Incomprehensible Conflict
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 [...]
Free Riding
The US is hardly the only First World nation which regards the actual text of its Constitution as a bit of an inconvenience. Japan does the same thing (perhaps rather appropriately, since we wrote it for them). Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution prohibits development of an “offensive” military capacity, hence the reason its rather large and capable navy is labeled [...]
A Court by Any Other Name?
Roberts, Kennedy, and Collegiality on the Supreme Court During the summer of 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke publicly about the need for greater unity on the nation’s highest court. In a commencement address at Georgetown Law School, he urged that “unanimity, or near-unanimity” would yield “clarity and guidance” for lawyers and lower courts trying to understand the Supreme Court’s [...]
