Essays Archive - Page 74 of 131

Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

September 22, 2020 • by Funda Başaran

In 2007, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had its second election victory, increasing its vote share to 47,8 and consolidating power. In the same year, it imposed important regulations to ‘clean’ the Internet of undesirable content. Law 5651, On Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes committed ...

Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

Higher Ed

Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

The Framing of Racism in Higher Education

September 22, 2020 • by Benjamin P. Davis

------ When I was a graduate student at Emory University in 2018, the law school suspended a professor, Paul Zwier, for using the N-word in class. Zwier’s response to the suspension was strange. Inside Higher Ed reported on a letter in which he said, “I’m not sure whether I used the ...

Capitalism

Charlie Chaplin and Karl Marx in Conversation

On Working and Being in Modern Times

September 21, 2020 • by Steven Stoll

Modern Times, directed by Charlie Chaplin, was released in 1936, in the depths of the Great Depression. It opens with a clock marking the beginning of the working day and a sentence: “A story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” Stampeding sheep dissolve into men ...

Charlie Chaplin and Karl Marx in Conversation

Democracy

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Progressives mourn a SCOTUS legend, famous for potent dissents, who saw gender equity as a path to civil rights for all

September 19, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

----------- Today, flowers are strewn on the steps of the Supreme Court, where “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved in stone. More than a thousand people gathered there tonight to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last night from cancer at age 87. Justice Ginsburg was born in ...

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Democracy

Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists

They are collectivists living in fear of being punished by their group

September 17, 2020 • by John Stoehr

On August 21, people gathered around the Washington County School District building in St. George, Utah. They came by the hundreds to protest the governor’s mandate requiring schoolchildren to wear face masks. According to local newspaper The Spectrum, a protester said during a closing prayer that “safety is not as ...

Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists

Democracy

Why Trump Could Win Again

Democrats must respond to rising inequality and the working class

September 17, 2020 • by Timothy Kuhner and Benjamin Page

A mere six weeks away from the 2020 election, the polls remain in flux. Some suggest that Biden is performing better than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Kerry did, while other polls place Biden behind Clinton. Evidence of the race tightening with Hispanic and white working-class voters suggests an ...

Democracy

The United States Post Office is in Trouble

The strange fate of the United States Postal Service

September 16, 2020 • by Ryan Yursha

As I turn onto the northbound entrance for the New Jersey Parkway and speed through the EZ-Pass lane, I take a look at my clock--I have less than two hours to make the 60-mile journey from Brick, New Jersey to Newark Penn Station, find parking, hop on the train, and ...

The United States Post Office is in Trouble

Higher Ed

COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Moving online and volunteering for vaccine trials this Fall requires a more prudent courage than reopening college campuses for classes and football

September 16, 2020 • by Edwin Michael and Eileen Hunt Botting

––––––– The next time you check the COVID-19 dashboard of your favorite university on your laptop screen, imagine asking: Who’s the bravest of them all? Pretend you’re like the Evil Queen in Snow White, who gazes in a mirror, asking who is the fairest of them all, in order to eliminate ...

COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Politics

Is the TikTok Deal Another Level of Trumpian Corruption?

Threatening China’s ByteDance may have forced a deal that benefits a campaign donor

September 15, 2020 • by David Lieberman

----- Here’s one more chore that Joe Biden should add to his Day One presidential to-do list: launch an investigation into whether the Trump administration improperly steered the U.S. operations of the world’s hottest new social media platform, TikTok, into the hands of one of his most important supporters, Oracle co-founder ...

Is the TikTok Deal Another Level of Trumpian Corruption?

Democracy

Donald Trump: Democracy’s Mirror image?

Modern liberal democracies can always cancel themselves

September 15, 2020 • by Philip Manow

______ In a modern representative democracy, power alternates via elections. Or, as one minimalist definition puts it: ‘democracy is simply a system in which incumbents lose elections and leave when they lose’.[1] But since they only leave after the event, democracy on this account of it can only ever prove itself ex-post. ...

Democracy

What Americans Can Learn from the Lebanese

Inspiration amid the ruins of Beirut

September 14, 2020 • by Roxana Toma

______ On August 4, 2020, 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut’s port blew up, destroying the city’s main commercial hub and damaging large areas of the Lebanese capital. The blast killed more than 170 people, wounded more than 6,000, left nearly 300,000 homeless, and caused damage worth $10-15 billion. Lebanon ...

What Americans Can Learn from the Lebanese

North America

“Alternative Facts” Produce Real Disasters

As Trump officials hide the truth to support the boss’s re-election campaign, Americans become more ill-informed — and vulnerable — than ever

September 13, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

----- Saturday night, at about 10:30, reporter Dan Diamond posted another blockbuster story in Politico. Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have been altering the weekly scientific reports issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reports that track the course of the coronavirus pandemic. These ...

Essays

Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

The Framing of Racism in Higher Education

Charlie Chaplin and Karl Marx in Conversation

On Working and Being in Modern Times

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Progressives mourn a SCOTUS legend, famous for potent dissents, who saw gender equity as a path to civil rights for all

Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists

They are collectivists living in fear of being punished by their group

Why Trump Could Win Again

Democrats must respond to rising inequality and the working class

The United States Post Office is in Trouble

The strange fate of the United States Postal Service

COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Moving online and volunteering for vaccine trials this Fall requires a more prudent courage than reopening college campuses for classes and football

Donald Trump: Democracy’s Mirror image?

Modern liberal democracies can always cancel themselves

“Alternative Facts” Produce Real Disasters

As Trump officials hide the truth to support the boss’s re-election campaign, Americans become more ill-informed — and vulnerable — than ever

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