Brittney Griner came out on Wednesday and it didn’t make news: [Even as] there is increased speculation about whether a male athlete — any male athlete — will come out while still playing a major professional team sport, one of the best female athletes in the history of team sports comes out, and the reactionContinue reading “‘OK to be Gay if You’re a Woman’: Brittney Griner Comes Out”
Category Archives: Politics
The Closing of the NYPD’s Mind
Today, Brooklyn College hosted a panel titled ‘Are We Safer? Costs, Benefits, and Alternatives to 20 Years of Aggressive Street Policing” (organized by the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties, Professor Anna Law.) The panel’s discussants were: John DeCarlo, Michael Powell (New York Times), Alex S. Vitale, and Franklin E. Zimring. The rangeContinue reading “The Closing of the NYPD’s Mind”
Courage in the Face of Terror, Elsewhere
After 9/11, we were told how brave New Yorkers were, how resilient this city was, how its people would come together in the face of adversity, how it had seen worse and endured and would do the same again. After 7/7 we were told that Londoners, who lived in a city that had survived theContinue reading “Courage in the Face of Terror, Elsewhere”
The Boston Bombings Are Bad News
By now, the bombings at the Boston Marathon are ‘old news’ for our 24-hour news and social media cycle. We’ve now run through the standard template of responses to such an attack: suspicion of the usual suspects, rallying cries of support for the afflicted, stern, righteous denunciations from political leaders, racist rants of revenge andContinue reading “The Boston Bombings Are Bad News”
With Trustees Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Part Two
Today’s entry–after yesterday’s union-busting lawyer Peter Pantaleo–in the City University of New York‘s Board of Trustees Roll of Dishonor is Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld. He is: [A]n investment banker at Bernstein Global Wealth Management, appointed to the Board of Trustees by Gov. Pataki in 1999. Wiesenfeld’s primary qualification for being a trustee is his loyal service toContinue reading “With Trustees Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Part Two”
With Trustees Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Part One
The City University of New York is a public university. Presumably, its Board of Trustees is staffed by those who have the interests of their constituency–students and teachers–first and foremost. Not so. As faculty and students find out, the Trustees includes many members whose qualifications for this job appear radically antithetical to this university’s mission.Continue reading “With Trustees Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Part One”
On Being Mistaken for a ‘Worker’
Variants of the following situation have, I think, occurred in many people’s lives here in the US. (I have been on both the giving and receiving end, so to speak.) You walk into a store (or perhaps a restaurant), perusing its offerings. You do not find what you need; you are confused; you need assistance.Continue reading “On Being Mistaken for a ‘Worker’”
The Non-Existent Fourth Estate
In his review of W. Sydney Robinson‘s Muckraker: The Scandalous Life and Times of W. T. Stead (‘The Only True Throne’, London Review of Books, 19 July 2012), John Pemble writes ‘Nothing like being an editor for getting a swollen head,’ the Fleet Street veteran A.G. Gardiner wrote in his memoirs. He must have had W.T.Continue reading “The Non-Existent Fourth Estate”
Molière on the Modern Healthcare System
There are times, when overcome by irritation at our modern medical system, which is expensive, run by insurance companies and all too often, populated by doctors who seemingly aspire to ever greater heights of corporate efficiency even as they resolutely neglect their bedside manners and care little about outcomes while ordering an array of expensiveContinue reading “Molière on the Modern Healthcare System”
Land, Ownership, Property, and Nationalism
A few days ago, a dinner-time conversation with some friends turned to the matter of property disputes within families. Both my wife and I spoke with some feeling about the fierce passions they evoked, their seeming intractability, and of course, in the context of modern real estate pressures, their ever-increasing ferocity. It reminded me, yetContinue reading “Land, Ownership, Property, and Nationalism”
Samir Chopra 