Northern America

By Katherine Mansted Will the rise of intelligent machines spell doom for humanity? Popular movies and news reporting on artificial intelligence (AI) would certainly have us think so. In Hollywood’s imaginings, AI is dangerous and uncontrollable. AI seduces: recall Ex Machina’s calculating femmebot. AI murders: think of the homicidal HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space […]

Despite more than three decades of empirical evidence from sociological and anthropological research that clearly shows that culture plays a significant role in the health care decision making process within Latino society, Latino cultural beliefs still remain the least understood among service providers in the American health care delivery system. This is in part due […]

This past Saturday 25th of February, Thomas E. Pérez became the first Latino to be elected as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The DNC constitutes the governing body for the United States Democratic Party. Among the main activities of the organization are the quadrennial elaboration of a Democratic platform where the central ideas […]

UPHOLDING THE CONSTITUTION AND PROTECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES DURING THE DARKEST OF TIMES IN AMERICAN HISTORY Lessons learned from the Japanese American internment during World War II are more relevant than ever. In a recent opinion-editorial in the New York Times, Karen Korematsu, Fred Korematsu’s daughter, and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, compared President’s […]

BY YAHYA CHAUDHRY Last week, capping off a successful awards season, Mahershala Ali won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight — the first time a Muslim has won in an acting category. Ali portrayed Juan, a Cuban-born drug dealer living in Miami who becomes a surrogate father to a bullied […]

BY JESSICA SCHAUER LIEBERMAN On February 25th, the Democratic National Committee chose Thomas Perez, former Secretary of Labor and Harvard Kennedy School alum, as its new chair. The media billed the election that resulted in Mr. Perez’s victory as a battle for the party’s soul — a clash between its leftist and establishment wings. The […]

BY MATT TYLER I thought impact investing was central to curing social ills. Government was secondary, in my mind. I was wrong. Over the last 18 months, working with governments in the United States and Australia, I have focused on how to improve social outcomes for the most vulnerable. As a graduate student at the […]

BY HAIYANG ZHANG A group of textile artisans protested against the newly developed labor-replacing machinery. They were afraid that the many years they spent mastering the skills would go to waste and that the machines would eventually rob them of their jobs. The violence broke out when people started smashing the knitting machines, and eventually […]

BY ANA DIAMOND Syrians, not too long ago, were a nation known for their rich cultural heritage, commerce, and diversity. Their country was home to one of the world’s ancient civilizations, and even in the 20th century it was frequently featured as an exotic tourist destination. Today, only the remains of many historic cities and […]

BY CHRISTIAN ASANTE The first time I spoke to Sandra, we were both studying in the library. President Trump had assumed office five days earlier, and his string of executive orders consumed student conversations. Sandra asked me to watch her things for a few minutes, and when she returned, I struck up a conversation. “What […]

BY MAGGIE SALINGER Republicans are trying to seduce us by promising lower premiums and removal of the individual mandate. No longer will Obamacare encroach on personal freedom and financial stability, they boast. But let’s not be fooled by the ACA alternatives we’ve been seeing from the Hill. These plans are no better for us. In fact, […]

From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the policies that welcomed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to this country from the 1960s onward, federal immigration policy has had a tremendous influence on the migration history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). The most recent plan for immigration reform, the Reforming American Immigration […]