Last week, no one had heard of Emily Wilder. Then she became the focus of a national campaign to get her fired. Days later, she was. Things move fast. So there’s a good chance that days from now, the story of a rookie journalist who lost her job because of the way she used social […]
Read MoreIn defense of the two-state solution
Last week, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in a conflict that claimed nearly 250 lives. But the underlying status quo makes another round of fighting all but inevitable, and a fundamental solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems further away than ever. Worse, the long-running American solution for the problem — a US-mediated peace […]
Read MoreThe progressive foreign policy moment has arrived
As the Israel-Gaza war raged, President Joe Biden made clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there was a problem. Full-throated support for Israel among Democrats was waning, namely because of progressives. Among the clearest signs were moves in the House and Senate to block a $735 million weapons sale to Israel, a deal […]
Read MoreWhy Biden’s team didn’t go all-in on Israel-Gaza
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a choice to make. It was mid-May, and in a few days he’d travel to Europe for talks with allies on the Arctic and climate change, and to meet with his Russian counterpart ahead of a presidential-level summit in June. But a fight broke out between Israel and Hamas […]
Read MoreWhat we owe to future generations
In 2015, 20 residents of Yahaba, a small town in northeastern Japan, went to their town hall to take part in a unique experiment. Their goal was to design policies that would shape the future of Yahaba. They would debate questions typically reserved for politicians: Would it be better to invest in infrastructure or child […]
Read MoreHow Taiwan held off Covid-19, until it didn’t
In December 2019, Taiwan‘s government learned that at least seven atypical pneumonia cases had been reported in Wuhan, China. Because of Taiwan’s proximity to China and the number of back-and-forth flights between the two countries, it was expected to have the second-highest number of Covid-19 cases worldwide. Instead, Taiwan has had one of the lowest […]
Read MoreThe US is bracing for a potential Haitian migrant crisis. Biden needs to step up.
Thousands of Haitians have been displaced amid escalating gang violence in the aftermath of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination on July 7. Many of them are expected to seek refuge in the US, but while the Biden administration has taken steps to welcome some, it has threatened others with the prospect of repatriation and shut […]
Read MoreHow climate change fueled the devastating floods in Germany and northwest Europe
After historic rainfall caused devastating flooding that killed more than 100 people in northwestern Europe and left more than 1,000 missing, officials and scientists aren’t being coy about the main culprit: climate change. In response to footage of the unfolding disaster, German Minister of the Environment Svenja Schulze announced, “These are the harbingers of climate […]
Read MoreThe economic case for letting in as many refugees as possible
The reason we should care about refugees is because they are people. But, unfortunately, for many people that is an insufficient moral claim. Even for the tens of thousands of Afghan people who put their lives in jeopardy working alongside the US military over the past 20 years. So let’s put it another way: Evidence […]
Read MoreWomen’s rights have an uncertain future in Afghanistan
Afghanistan, after the Taliban takeover, is a waiting game. And for Afghan women, the waiting game is agonizing. The last time the Taliban held power, in the late ’90s and early 2000s, repression was a feature of their rule. This was especially true for women. Girls could not attend school; women could not hold jobs […]
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