Romania in 2020

Fighting Corruption Just Got Harder because of Trump

The big unknown for Romania moving into 2020 is its relationship with the United States. Though Romanians have become more anti-American in the last few years, they are still the second most pro-American post-socialist state in Europe (Poland is in first place). Since 1990, the U.S. ambassador has played a ...
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Romania in 2020

Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

An Evaluation of the House Democratic Leadership’s Performance

I have long expressed my exasperation with the timid way in which the House Democratic leadership has only reluctantly moved toward impeachment, even in the face of the damning Mueller Report, and then has proceeded in the most narrow and legalistic way imaginable. Trump is a very dangerous President, and it ...
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Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

Populism on the retreat

Romania was one of the post-communist countries to join the neoliberal bandwagon slower than the Visegrad group and made it to EU membership just when the 2008 global crisis was about to break. For over a decade after the end of the brutal Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship, old communist apparatchiks together ...
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The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

But Pete Buttigieg is not my guy

Many remember this loss because of Dean’s cowboy moment at the lectern. Masochists and political junkies can watch the famous “scream” that provoked endless media mockery here. But the swift collapse of the Dean campaign following Iowa also revealed other weaknesses that early polling had not: the excitement of this ...
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I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

A Lesson from Watergate

How Democrats Should Broaden the Impeachment Charges

That is a very welcome development for two reasons: because Trump’s record of malfeasance extends far beyond “Ukraine,” and because, as I have been arguing for months, impeachment necessarily points beyond impeachment, to November 2020. Democrats thus need to present as strong an overarching narrative of Trump’s malfeasance as possible. ...
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The EU’s University in Exile

On November 15, Central European University (CEU) officially inaugurated its new campus in Vienna, Austria, having been arbitrarily ousted from Hungary. On the same day, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government opened another large sports stadium in Budapest. Predictably, the government-controlled Hungarian media focused on the latter event and ignored the departure of ...
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The EU’s University in Exile

Write Back Soon

Mass Incarceration and “Writing Intensive” Vulnerability

Throughout that typically chilly Bay Area summer, I was turning over in my mind the problem of satisfying the “writing intensive” designation of my new undergraduate seminar, “Black Writing To/From/About Prison.” I struggled to come up with a way to make the course’s mandated four papers, or 20-pages of writing, ...
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Write Back Soon

Food for Thought

Five Ways New York Is Ready to Increase Organic Recycling

The New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) held a public hearing on November 20th for a newly proposed organic waste recycling rule. It would increase the number of restaurants, stores, and other businesses required to source-separate organic waste for composting or other environmentally acceptable disposal. Compared to cities like San Francisco and Seattle, which ...
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Food for Thought

Evo Morales’ Presidency in Bolivia was Imperfect and Contested

His Removal from Power is Still a Coup

When the military intervenes to depose a democratically elected leader, it’s a coup. Let’s get that out of the way. Even if that leader’s mandate has never been accepted by segments of the population, even if the leader goes on to alienate some original supporters, even if there are large public protests against the ...
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Evo Morales’ Presidency in Bolivia was Imperfect and Contested

The Prime Minister Versus History

How Boris Johnson misrepresented the United Kingdom’s past to present himself as its political heir

This is an updated version of an article published at Public Seminar on July 30, 2019. Politicians like to tell stories about themselves. Leaders like to tell stories about their country. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is the first since Winston Churchill with both a prominent personal story and his ...
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The Prime Minister Versus History

The Equal Rights Amendment is BAAACK!

The Democratic House returns to a long-awaited Constitutional fix

First introduced into Congress in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was intended to do away with the plethora of state laws which restricted women's property rights, disadvantaged them under state family laws, or barred them from holding office or serving on juries. Proposed by the National Woman’s Party, it ...
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