BY CAROLINE GIMMILLARO It’s engagement season. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds around the United States are exploding with engagement announcements and offers of congratulations. A deluge of engagement pictures, engagement party invites, and Pinterest wedding boards are sure to follow. For most American women in heterosexual relationships, this excitement will be accompanied by the question […]

BY WILL EBERLE When the water started turning brownish-black, residents of Flint, Michigan knew they had a problem. But it would take months before they learned the truth; a truth which should serve as a wake-up call to communities across America. And just this week, Flint’s newly-elected mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency […]

BY JOELLE THOMAS “I see no objections. The Paris Agreement for the climate is adopted.” A decidedly stoic Laurent Fabius—President of the COP21 talks—brings down his leaf-shaped gavel. The room erupts in cheering, as exhausted and emotional negotiators from 196 countries take to their feet. Al Gore is beaming. The cries echo along Le Bourget’s […]

Introduction This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first wave of Vietnamese Americans arriving in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Southern Vietnamese fled their homeland after the Communist North captured Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) on April 30, 1975. Over the next two decades, waves of political refugees breathed new life […]

BY RYAN COHEN Playing on the fears that President Obama decried in his public address earlier this month, Donald Trump proposed that the United States bar Muslims from entry, including re-entry of Muslim U.S. citizens traveling abroad. It’s easy to deride this proposal as intolerant, unconstitutional, and abhorrent, as many have done. What’s more difficult—and […]

BY DANIEL TOSTADO George Borjas, the nation’s leading immigration economist according the Wall Street Journal, is currently an economics professor at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Originating from Cuba, Borjas fled Havana at age 12 with his mother in 1962 on a plane to Miami. Professor Borjas is well known for promoting a policy the […]

Introduction The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has strategically used Iraq’s unstable geopolitical and security landscape to rise from obscurity to become a powerful and ruthless organization. This terrorist organization has developed the capability to acquire vast stretches of territory and intends to continue expanding. As a result of its territorial ambitions […]

Under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has secured its position as a major global actor. The country benefited from robust economic growth in the early 2000s and strengthened its ties with the region, the European Union, Africa, and the United States. Turkey rose to prominence with its “zero problems with […]

BY JASON PEUQUET With all the rancor in the past few years about government shutdowns, debt ceilings, special budget commissions or committees, and fiscal cliffs, it is easy to think that U.S. budget policy is more about theatrical clashes of personality, and kicking the can down the road than about actual public policymaking. And it […]

BY JESSICA CUSSINS Now that we have the power to permanently alter humanity, should we? This was the question at the heart of the International Summit on Human Gene Editing in Washington, D.C., last week, an event co-hosted by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of Medicine, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the […]

There is a common saying amongst Israeli Jews in reference to Israel’s historical dependence on foreign fossil fuels: Moses took a wrong turn while traveling to the Holy Land. Yet this aphorism continues to be challenged, much to Israel’s benefit. What started out with the discoveries of natural gas fields equaling 22 trillion cubic feet […]

BY LAUREN WINDMEYER Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would take two months paternity leave following the birth of his first child. This announcement exemplifies a trend in the tech world towards improved benefits for new parents – this year alone, Amazon, Netflix, and Microsoft have all announced extended parental leave. This is of […]