Northern America

BY MICHAEL AUSLEN In the weeks since the Supreme Court term ended and Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the bench, many progressives, myself included, have felt the same collective unease. We don’t yet know all that President Trump’s appointment of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will mean for civil liberties, but […]

BY REED SOUTHARD “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”[1] So said Benjamin Franklin at the very birth of the American experiment. Yet Americans today, more and more, hang separately. We no longer collectively tune in to fireside chats, Walter Cronkite, or even Seinfeld. Instead, like a modern […]

BY ANDREW POULIN AND PARTICIPANTS IN THE DUBIN FIELD LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE “A natural disaster does not create crises, it reveals them.” When Tropical Storm Harvey hit the greater Houston area on August 26, 2017, it dropped over 50 inches of rain—more than Houston’s total annual rainfall—in only 36 hours. Roads, shops, and homes were quickly […]

BY SASHA RAMANI President Trump’s long-promised trade war against China has begun. In March, President Trump unveiled tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and later targeted China directly with tariffs on $60 billion worth of imports on technology and energy industry components. In April, he launched a further 25 percent tariff on Chinese industrial technology, […]

BY BEN MCGUIRE On Friday, May 25, 2018, the Republic of Ireland may be one of the first nations in history to legalize abortion by referendum. If the motion passes—recent polling has tightened to a very close race—Ireland will join much of the world over the last few decades in a trend toward relaxing abortion […]

BY MOUNIR MAHMALAT Imagine a young couple at a boring dancing party. While one tries to animate and initiate the dancing, the other remains seated, complaining, finding excuses. Suddenly, the party ends, and both go home – frustrated. Reforming the European Union (EU) might be less appealing than a dance party. However, the current political […]

BY QUINTON MAYNE For many Americans, cities have become a beacon of hope. The can-do, eye-level politics of our city halls is increasingly viewed as an antidote to what seems like a culture of top-down, self-serving, and polarizing party politics inside the Beltway. An important question then is whether city leaders will live up to […]

BY LINA HIDALGO In Harris County, Texas, the third largest county in the nation and home to Houston, the “education gap” is something that tens of thousands of families struggle with daily. One-in-five children in Texas is born in Harris County, and nearly 35 percent of them live below the federal poverty line. Low-income students […]

BY ALISON COLLINS AND BAR PELED The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has done very little over the years to prioritize women—not at its founding, not during its transition to a professional and international institution, and certainly not today. The administration’s failure to address the gender imbalance among the faculty and in the curriculum, as well […]

As I sat in the sold-out theater waiting to see Black Panther, Black families filled the room with a tingling excitement that didn’t abate until the closing credits. The boy sitting beside me squirmed in his seat, knocking popcorn into my lap with each wiggle. I couldn’t blame him one bit. Black pride in Black […]

To begin this week’s podcast, Mariam Ghanem updates us on the unsurprising results of the elections in Egypt. Then, Blaire Byg discusses Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s tour of the US, which has included visits with celebrities like Oprah in addition to the more predictable cast of politicians and journalists. It seems that MBS is […]

As Israeli control over Jerusalem crystallizes, the likelihood that the city can act as the capital of future Israeli and Palestinian states recedes rapidly. Increasingly, peacemakers and politicians are being forced to consider more creative solutions—and many are looking to the past for inspiration.