The Case for Liberal Arts Education in a Time of Crisis
Well before Covid-19 arrived on the scene, pundits were sounding the death knell for higher education—and now many are proclaiming that the pandemic has dealt the final blow. They may even be planning...
View ArticleHow Corporations Make Pandemics Deadlier
In early 2009, a toddler named Édgar Hernández, of La Gloria, Mexico, came down with a fever and a nasty, persistent cough. Doctors told his parents he was suffering from a mysterious respiratory...
View ArticleThe Biggest Threat to a Coronavirus Vaccine Is the American People
President Donald Trump claims that a coronavirus vaccine will be available by the end of the year. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, expects one within 18 months. Most other...
View ArticleTwitter Can’t Rein In Donald Trump
“President Trump on Tuesday tweeted to his nearly 80 million followers alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough,” Timothy...
View ArticleThe Pandemic Is the Right Time to Defund the Police
The pandemic has slowed much American police work, but police are still working. “As of May 17, 375 people had been shot and killed by on-duty police officers in 2020—about the same rate as other...
View ArticleThe Implausibility of an “Explosive” Economic Rebound by November
On Tuesday, Politico reported a growing anxiety among Democratic policy experts that a dramatic economic recovery could boost President Trump in November’s election. Jason Furman, who chaired the...
View ArticleThe End of the Backlash to Big Tech
Don’t trust anyone who gets rich during a pandemic. Jeff Bezos, whose world-straddling fortune was built largely on the backs of immiserated warehouse workers around the planet, has seen his net worth...
View ArticleUnionizing the Office in an Age of Remote Work
Before it was mandated for millions of workers by the coronavirus, remote work was an occasionally controversial practice. While some management studies have claimed that working from home increased...
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David Frum’s Hold Over the Center
I will grudgingly admit that I underestimated the Never Trump conservatives. Like many on the left, I shared the view summarized by Jeet Heer in The New Republic on the eve of the 2016 election—that...
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The Coronavirus Was Here
I live three miles from ground zero for coronavirus-shaming in America. Eons ago, in early March, the reality of the pandemic was taking hold, and public officials—at least, the ones who hadn’t...
View ArticleThe Trump Administration Has Abandoned Worker Safety at the Worst Moment
As “essential workers” labor under dangerous conditions through the coronavirus pandemic, they might be curious to learn that the terms of their employment are in technical violation of federal law....
View ArticleMy Life on Rent Strike
I moved up to Philly from North Carolina, just south of Charlotte, about two years ago for school. I loved it but had to drop out in 2018 because it’s hard to manage going to school and keeping up with...
View ArticleI Gave Birth While Incarcerated During a Pandemic
I got to Bedford Hills in the beginning of February, but I was hearing a little bit about coronavirus beforehand. It really didn’t seem to be that major. It had been a good week or so that I was in...
View ArticleNo More Cop Unions
When Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department killed 46-year-old George Floyd in cold blood last week, he showed the world exactly what kind of man he is. Chauvin has been cited multiple...
View ArticleThe Racist Gatekeepers of American Land
The way many white Americans consider others in relation to public spaces, public lands, and nature is inherently proprietary. This is in large part because the history behind all of these spaces, and...
View ArticleTrump’s One Constant Is a Fetish for Bloodshed
Earlier this month, armed white protesters bearing Confederate flags and semiautomatic rifles strode through the halls of Michigan’s capitol building to challenge the state’s stay-at-home order. State...
View ArticleMark Zuckerberg Comes to Trump’s Defense
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2018, a contrite Mark Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook was still a force for good, as long as the company ensured that its tools were not used...
View ArticleThe Deep Amnesia of Our National Conscience
On Friday, the arrests of CNN’s Omar Jimenez and his crew covering the protests against the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis were carried live, with reactions in real time from two of the...
View ArticleThe Flawed Politics of a Law-and-Order Campaign
Five days of anguish and protest. Five nights of anger, broken windows, out-of-control police behavior and the nauseating television images of tear-gassed citizens and burning squad cars. As Donald...
View ArticleAmerica’s Social Contract Is Broken
So little has changed. Nearly 30 years have passed since the Los Angeles riots, and yet we find ourselves in a near identical situation: A black man brutalized by police; the incident caught on camera,...
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