Education, Training and Labor

The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) in Manhattan is known for its vast collections of contemporary art, not the workers who keep it running. However, as its galleries shut down, MoMA’s labor organizing has gone on display. Thanks to the advocacy of its five unions, when MoMA shut its doors during Covid-19, […]

I am not a baker. But, like so many others, I have tried my hand at a couple of recipes during these turbulent times. I quickly learned two things: the order of the recipe matters; and, second, flour is essential. Our education system has yet to take the first lesson to heart. Instead of adding […]

As a record number of Americans file for unemployment and families struggle to make ends meet, the COVID-19 Pandemic has not only accentuated deep flaws and inefficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system; it has also exposed gaping holes in America’s social safety net. In response, U.S. policymakers must act boldly to construct a new social […]

Madagascar is strewn with remnants of the French colonial period. From its French-style colonial architecture to its prized French restaurants, traces of the colonial era abound. One relic of the French colonial era that continues to significantly affect life in Madagascar is the country’s language and education system. In Madagascar, both Malagasy and French are […]

After decades of languishing as one of the nation’s least effective public education systems, New Mexico is making significant strides toward becoming a model for public education. Visionary leadership from Governor Lujan Grisham has resulted in significant investments in New Mexico’s chronically underfunded public schools, with state policymakers increasing spending on public education by approximately […]

Students with disabilities were already on unequal footing before COVID-19. Now, the pandemic is putting their civil rights at risk. The $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill grants Education Secretary Betsy DeVos the authority to ask Congress to waive key protections for special education students afforded by the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), the federal education […]

In 2016, I was working at a UNHCR clinic in a refugee camp in South Beirut, Lebanon as a medical assistant. I remember throwing out suitcases full of donated medications, which were all outdated, or otherwise uselessbecause they were not addressing the health problems that we were seeing in the population. What good is a […]

While international students are chasing their dreams at colleges across the nation, visa requirements are forcing their spouses to put theirs on hold. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. At a bustling café in Cambridge, a group is sipping coffee, sharing cakes – and discussing strategies to stay busy. They’re not retirees (their […]

The rise of China has led to a surge in partnerships between American and Chinese universities. These partnerships offer significant opportunities for American institutions – a potential pool of new students and the possibility of demonstrating the value of free inquiry and the liberal arts to a new audience in China. But they also present […]

  In my senior year of high school, I spent months gathering everything I could find on LGBTQ+ history for a research presentation. As the day approached, I panicked. It wasn’t that I feared my classmates would explicitly belittle me during the presentation, but rather a feeling of isolation. No one had ever spoken about […]

Meritocracy is generally celebrated as an ideology that promotes equality of opportunity, and hence, seen as just. Xuan Yee interrogates this view by exploring the moral, psychological, and intellectual ramifications of meritocracy when taken to its extreme. He argues that an unquestioned belief in meritocracy is dangerous, for it encourages the successful to justify their own moral deservingness of their position in society, and thus, legitimizes inequality.

Accessing the American College Dream There is a persistent and aspirational narrative in the United States that no matter what circumstances one was born into, college can be the great equalizer of opportunity. Imbued within this narrative are two main beliefs. The first is that the United States is a meritocracy where the cream will […]