Tuesday was a major event for midterm primary elections; eleven were held that day, and the results revealed a great deal about the current state of partisan and electoral politics. There were high-profile candidates stepping into political races for the first time, as well as high-profile incumbents facing primary challenges.
Ahmed Rashid, the internationally acclaimed journalist and author of Taliban, has been in high demand with news media lately. Rashid has a column in today’s New York Daily News, was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday while another column of his ran in the Washington Post, and last weekend,
Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine public servant and political theorist best known for his brief yet highly influential work of political philosophy, The Prince, was born on this day in 1469. Though the man’s name may be now synonymous with cunning and deceitful political tactics, the debate as to whether Machiavelli’s
At the close of the UN Summit on Climate Change, diplomats may have left Copenhagen frustrated by the slow pace of progress, but as Yale professor of environmental policy, risk analysis, and political science John Wargo writes in his new book, Green Intelligence, the keys to environmental safety often begin
The following guest post was written by Marva Barnett, author of Victor Hugo on Things That Matter: What is just and what is legal are all too often not the same thing. Nina Totenberg’s recounting of the current Supreme Court case about prosecutorial immunity illuminates what Victor Hugo called “the
In this fascinating video produced by the Teachers College Record, historian Jonathan Zimmerman discusses the little red schoolhouse as an icon of American culture and a key touchstone to be reckoned with in the pursuit of educational reform. http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1078591422 To read an excerpt from Zimmerman’s book on the Yale University
Forty-four years ago this week, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, marking a monumentous moment in civil rights history. Yesterday’s confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor fell on the anniversary of the law’s passage, lending even greater historical resonance to a moment that President Obama celebrated as
Sometimes it takes an outsider’s point of view to see society as it truly is. Such keen insights are abundant in Bite the Hand That Feeds You, a collection of the work of British-born journalist Henry Fairlie compiled by Newsweek contributor Jeremy McCarter. Fairlie, who passed away in 1990, is
While the recent climate change legislation passed in the House of Representatives represents the first time Congress has approved a bill targeted at global warming, its passage does not come without controversy. The focus of the bill is a cap-and-trade system in which the total amount of emission pollution is
With Barack Obama’s recent pledge to get serious about balancing the budget, the New York Times‘ David Leonhardt sought out the group of people that are, he writes, “ideally suited to help Mr. Obama with this task”: behavioral economists. Citing the work of University of Chicago economist and YUP author