The Role of White Evangelical Churches in Urban Renewal BY EUGENE SCOTT This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  Over the past decade, cities have increased significantly in popularity. While the mid-twentieth century saw the rise of the suburb—due in part to white flight— the early twenty-first century is […]

BY SHANOOR SEERVAI This essay is excerpted from the single ‘Daughters of the Red Light: Coming of Age in Mumbai’s Brothels.’ I am seated cross-legged on a brothel floor on a hot April afternoon. The door is ajar. Just beyond it, a disheveled man in a grey pinstriped shirt appears at the top of the […]

While the recession devastated all Americans, Latinos were among those most severely affected, losing two thirds of all their wealth, mainly due to plummeting housing values.

BY TYLER S. THIGPEN This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  The conversation that most haunted Marshall Chambers—former director of strategic initiatives for Barrow County Schools, a rural district in Georgia—happened in 2001 at one of the district’s high schools. Chambers, himself a graduate of Piedmont College in Demorest, […]

The Obergefell decision is a case that defines a generation. Marriage equality and LGBTQ rights are poised for a victory untenable for generations past. Just twelve years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Lawrence v. Texas and, as Justice Scalia argued in the dissent, doomed the “end of all morals legislation.” Lawrence […]

How the politicization of the debate over public education hurts the teaching profession.  BY ALEX MEADOW Like many young adults, my twenties have featured family and friends asking me, “Alex, what are you up to now?” When I said that I was teaching, specifically at a school in a low-income neighborhood of Brooklyn, they would […]

BY RUFINA PARK This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  On the surface, South Korea’s education system has notable merits. In the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which measures the cognitive skills of fifteen-year-olds from sixty-five participating economies […]

BY LUCY BOYD “[Charter schools] have become the leading edge of long-cherished ideological crusade by the far right to turn education into a consumer choice rather than a civic obligation.”  – Diane Ravitch, a leading author and academic on the American education system. “The only threat charter schools hold is to the myth that poor […]

Abstract The school to prison pipeline refers to the practice of pushing students out of educational institutions, primarily via zero tolerance and harsh disciplinary policies, and into the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The pipeline has emerged in part as a response to the media panic over youth violence and the need to keep […]

BY MIA MITCHELL Today, four billion people, or two-thirds of the planet, are offline, but that is rapidly changing. Momentum is building among private, public, and non-profit actors to expand Internet access globally. From Facebook’s Internet.org to the Alliance for Affordable Internet to Oluvus, numerous projects have launched in recent years with the shared goal […]

During a visit with service members in Afghanistan earlier this year, newly installed Secretary of Defense Aston Carter announced he is “very open-minded” about allowing transgender people to serve in the U.S. military. Carter’s speech suggests the military is open to reconsidering its discriminatory ban on transgender military personnel. But we cannot afford to wait. […]

Abstract The shooting and killing of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, drew national attention to issues of discrimination, police brutality, and the growing divide between communities and their local law enforcement agencies. Compounding this with the grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer responsible, the need for police reform became […]