Two weeks ago, on 8 September, after finishing my morning stint my gym, I headed to the Brooklyn College campus. I arrived at 12:20, five minutes after the 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM classes had ended. The campus was overflowing with students: streaming out from classrooms and lecture halls, clogging the corridors, the walkways, theContinue reading “The Rainbow In My Roster”
Category Archives: Politics
Post-Colonial Resentment, Irrationality, and Jeremy Corbyn
Experienced students of politics and of the human mind know that politics–the ‘science,’ the business, of power–is all too often a zone of the irrational, a domain of intense passion and emotion, covered up with a thin veneer of seemingly rational discourse, of point and counterpoint. This irrationality manifests itself in familiar phenomena such asContinue reading “Post-Colonial Resentment, Irrationality, and Jeremy Corbyn”
Was Charlie Hebdo ‘Mocking’ The Death Of Alan Kurdi?
Charlie Hebdo has offended again. A recently published cartoon titled “So Close to His Goal”, shows Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose tragic drowning death sharply focused the world’s attention on the desperation of the migrant crisis in Europe, lying face down on the sand near a billboard featuring Ronald McDonald and advertising a 2-for-1Continue reading “Was Charlie Hebdo ‘Mocking’ The Death Of Alan Kurdi?”
Amitav Ghosh And Dževad Karahasan On ‘An Aesthetic of Indifference’
In his essay The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi (New Yorker, July 1995), Amitav Ghosh introduces the reader to the Bosnian writer Dževad Karahasan and his ‘remarkable essay called Literature and War (published…in the collection Sarajevo, Exodus of a City), which ‘makes a startling connection between modern literary aestheticism and the contemporary world’s indifference to violence.’ GhoshContinue reading “Amitav Ghosh And Dževad Karahasan On ‘An Aesthetic of Indifference’”
Samuel Bagenstos On The Mistaken Decision To Jail Kim Davis
Over at The New Republic Samuel Bagenstos offers some spot-on analysis of the decision to jail Kim Davis, ” the Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who defied a U.S. Federal Court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples” and concludes: To many observers…the drama is the point. By making a prominent example of those who obstinately refuseContinue reading “Samuel Bagenstos On The Mistaken Decision To Jail Kim Davis”
Handing Over The Keys To The Driverless Car
Early conceptions of a driverless car world spoke of catastrophe: the modern versions of the headless horseman would run amok, driving over toddlers and grandmothers with gay abandon, sending the already stratospheric death toll from automobile accidents into ever more rarefied zones, and sending us all cowering back into our homes, afraid to venture outContinue reading “Handing Over The Keys To The Driverless Car”
Parental Rage And Giving Babies The Bird
Rebecca Schuman–who often pisses off many on the Internet thanks to her writing on modern academia–recently made herself the target of a great deal of vitriol thanks to a post on Slate that featured her giving her sleeping baby the bird. The usual avalanche of abuse, characteristic of Internet furores, spilled forth: threats to reportContinue reading “Parental Rage And Giving Babies The Bird”
Donald Trump And The Art Of The Presidential Deal
Shortly after I arrived in the US in 1987, I began working in my campus cafeteria (at the then minimum wage of $4.25 an hour.) One of my non-student companions at work was a young man who worked on the weekends as a replacement for the weekday staff. He was frivolous and funny and irreverent;Continue reading “Donald Trump And The Art Of The Presidential Deal”
Fraternities: The Curse Of The Sylvan Campus
‘Fraternity’ used to be a perfectly good word–remember Liberté, égalité, fraternité? Used to be, when you saw that word in print, you thought of revolutionaries, the brotherhood of man, the formation of political and social bonds that spanned class and caste and creed. But then it was taken over by a bunch of drunken rapists-in-training,Continue reading “Fraternities: The Curse Of The Sylvan Campus”
A Grandmother’s Gift: A Curiously Significant Number
I’m a numbers nerd; in all probability, this stems from being a sports fan. I calculate sports statistics in my head; I can effortlessly multiply any pair of two-digit numbers in that same location; I retain an astonishing number of odd numerical markers in my cranium. As such, some numbers acquire a significance that goesContinue reading “A Grandmother’s Gift: A Curiously Significant Number”
Samir Chopra 