United States of America

Introduction This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first wave of Vietnamese Americans arriving in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Southern Vietnamese fled their homeland after the Communist North captured Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) on April 30, 1975. Over the next two decades, waves of political refugees breathed new life […]

BY RYAN COHEN Playing on the fears that President Obama decried in his public address earlier this month, Donald Trump proposed that the United States bar Muslims from entry, including re-entry of Muslim U.S. citizens traveling abroad. It’s easy to deride this proposal as intolerant, unconstitutional, and abhorrent, as many have done. What’s more difficult—and […]

This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a hate crime. The hallways of Harvard Law School are lined with portraits of every tenured professor in the history of the university. As a first-year law student, the first time that I walked down those hallways I was painfully aware of the white men […]

Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction; A Gesture Life; Aloft; and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Selected by the New Yorker as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century,” Lee is professor […]

On October 21st, 2015, the first round of the first parliamentary elections held in Egypt since 2011 came to a close. A majority of available seats were won by loyalists to President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, in an election in which approximately one-fifth of the electorate voted. The election has been hailed by Al-Sisi as the […]

BY LAUREN LEATHERBY Last night, GOP presidential candidates took to the stage for the third Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election season. This debate was the first Republican debate since the Democratic candidates made their first appearance on the debate stage just over two weeks ago, on Oct. 13. Moderators and candidates in both […]

BY LUCY BOYD “That’s how we’ve been crafting our questions, so that Senator X will respond to what Governor Y said about him or a policy he proposed and try to encourage them to actually debate Lincoln-Douglas style as much as possible.” – Jake Tapper, moderator, before second GOP debate on September 16, 2015. The […]

In telling your friends you’ve “discovered” a new restaurant, you imply to have found something you like; something your social circle is not yet “hip” to; something that should be on everyone’s radar but – because of your keen Googling skills or happenstance stroll down Massachusetts Avenue — has in it just a few more […]

Across the country, we all hear the trumpeting of Hispanic Heritage Month. Elected officials, from local leaders to the highest office in the land, have released messages of inspiration, praising the contributions of our Latina/o community. Unfortunately, the media pays less attention to one group of voices, because it is a small group when compared […]

BY LUCY BOYD The second Republican debate in September covered everything from the Iranian nuclear deal to vaccinations. Climate Change. Immigration. Putin. China. All were given significant airtime during the lengthy three-hour time slot. One important topic left completely unaddressed: our failing public education system. But that may not be a bad thing. The Common […]

Introduction The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) is a product of Iraq’s and Syria’s sectarian polarization, political dysfunction, and the alienation of the local Sunni population from the Iraqi and Syrian regimes. The US-led anti-ISIS coalition was triggered by the jihadists’ capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014.[i] While dramatic, […]

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.