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 ... 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
Oliver Stone sets his eyes on Bush
It’s November 4, 2008. I’m currently sitting in a history seminar on the Yalta Conference of 1945, discussing how the Allied leaders decided to divvy up the Balkans. It’s striking to read the statements of Stalin and Churchill, because they read like ancient history. Churchill was driven by a single animating desire: the preservation of the British Empire. All of ... Read More
The impracticality of preventive war By Eric Paternot ‘09 and Richard Coffin ‘11 George W. Bush is still in office, but discussions of his legacy have already captured the attention of the country. Surprisingly, it isn’t so much the countless scandals that plagued his presidency that provoke debates or general unease; it is rather what many know as the Bush ... Read More
Just one week after endorsing the candidacy of Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and himself a former candidate for president, visited the Institute of Politics at Harvard to speak with students. Richardson is a study in contrasts: There is the glad-handing chief executive who meets with constituents one day every month in three-minute increments and holds the ... Read More
