Explore all Articles

Every year in the United States, roughly $4 billion are spent performing 700,000 surgeries that we know don’t work.[1],[2] Why? In part because, on a superficial level, it sounds so plausible. This procedure, an arthroscopic partial meniscectomy, is a knee surgery that purports to relieve pain by trimming a frayed meniscus to return it to […]

Protests have a bad rep in Singapore. Framed by the state as violent, divisive, and a threat to stability, protests are deliberately discouraged, largely disallowed, and when permitted, heavily controlled. Poh Yong Han make a case for encouraging “protest culture” in Singapore by responding to common criticisms of protest culture, and outlining the ways in which protests might actually serve to strengthen Singapore.

In 2018 and 2019, more than 1000 businesses or their chief executive officers took public stands on constitutional, environmental and social matters often unrelated to their core business. The rise of unprecedented CEO activism in America signals the permanent convergence of business and social responsibility in the Information Age.  This activism by business leaders is in […]

Introduction In late December 2012, the American Psychiatric Association published the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the authoritative document for diagnosing mental health in the United States. It contained a dramatic shift in language, decades in the making: the term “gender identity disorder” was replaced with “gender dysphoria” […]

On August 3rd, yet another crime of gender-based violence made headlines in Mexico: ”Girl Kidnapped and Raped by Police”. Over the following days, feminist protests erupted across the country to demand women’s right to basic dignity—a life free of violence. However, these protests have been mistakenly and unfairly accused of being violent themselves, when in […]

Desiree,[1] 40-year-old mother of two children, wanted to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. As she had health insurance through Medicaid, it did not cover abortion, and the full cost of the procedure was more than she could afford. Kim, a pregnant mother of two, was arrested and needed $2,500 to post bail, which is prohibitively expensive. […]

I recently met with a young Kenyan thespian traveling throughout the U.S. in search of a career in the arts.  As we reminisced about his college days, he expressed some regret that his education did not include classes that would have adequately prepared him for a successful career in his chosen profession, despite having attended […]

Introduction to Opportunity Zones As part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Opportunity Zone (OZ) program was created as a mechanism to funnel investments into targeted low-income areas throughout the United States. Though the program was recently implemented, it has gained significant attention as a place-based policy that brings private-sector capital into […]

BY ELLY ROSTOUM   If you were given half a billion dollars, what would you do to advance democracy around the world? That’s what people at the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) strategize about. MEPI, the U.S. State Department’s most innovative soft power tool, funds projects in the Middle East and North […]

In the current political climate, bipartisan consensus on social policy is rare. One shared priority between progressives and conservatives, however, is reducing recidivism in the criminal justice system. This bipartisan consensus has led to many local, state and federal agencies investing in a variety of anti-recidivism programs in recent years. Common programs in the U.S. […]

Their symbol: a white headscarf. Their weapon: a list of names spoken aloud. Their mission: to keep the memory of their children, “disappeared” by the Argentine military junta four decades ago, alive in the memory of modern-day Argentina and beyond. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of May Plaza), many now in their 70s […]

On the evening of July 9th, 1.3 billion people took a collective gasp as India was knocked out of the Cricket World Cup 2019.  An event that takes place once in four years, the Cricket World Cup is the most anticipated sporting event in India, where cricket is a religion. During this year’s Cricket World […]