By Leigh Patel | Mainstream media’s coverage of the campus-based student protests and encampments across the globe primarily addresses the ‘need’ to use law enforcement, including university police and politicians’ calls for National Guard. Armed with riot gear which does not include mace, batons, firearms, or metal or rubber tie handcuffs, this armament has been firmly in place long before this student mobilization. Through phones and social media, the world watches as students’ encampments are forcibly assaulted and police officers, municipal and university, use blunt force to remove students and faculty from these sites of protests. Read more →

By Alexander Kriss, PhD | Matthew, a twenty-year-old man I’d worked with in individual psychotherapy for a few months, began a session saying he was in crisis. “I think I’m a narcissist,” he told me. “I’m terrified of it.” I asked Matthew why he thought this. He said the night before he had, after much agonizing, confronted his boyfriend, Patrick, about his controlling behavior: Patrick decided when they socialized and with whom; he required advance approval of any expenses related to the apartment they shared; he discouraged Matthew from engaging in any interests that did not help to “build the relationship,” especially Matthew’s longtime passion for oil painting. Read more →

Frederick S. Lane | In my previous post, “The Napoleon of the Mailbags,” I talked about the enthusiasm of Christian nationalists for a re-invigoration of the 1873 Comstock Act. In the view of zealots like US District Court Judge Matthew Kaszmyrak (D. 19th Cent.), the law's long-dormant prohibition against the mailing of “(e)very article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion” amounts to a national ban of mifepristone and misoprostol, the two medications most commonly used to induce abortion. Read more →

A Q&A with Jonathan Rigsby | By the time I sat down to write “Drive,” I’d had to put a lot of thought into where I wanted to focus my energy. Working, parenting, and driving were taking up the majority of my time, and I had to choose how to spend the very small amount of free time I had. I’m very fortunate to have an incredibly supportive partner. When I decided to get serious about writing a book, she was with me every step of the way. Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow | Sierra Leone’s civil war ran from 1991 to 2002. I reported it occasionally, in 1994 and 1995, mainly about a group of South African mercenaries hired by the Freetown government. (The same mercenaries had also worked in Angola.) In 1999-2000, I worked there again, not as a journalist, but with UNAMSIL, the United Nations peacekeeping mission, with 17,500 troops then the world’s largest. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | “How do you teach a kindergartener about the histories and contemporary legacies of race and racism in a way that affirms her humanity and agency?” Dr. OiYan Poon poses herself this question in the introduction of “Asian American Is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family” after her three-year-old daughter Té Té broaches the topic of race. An answer to her question could be found by turning to this year’s theme for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow | I reported from Angola 1993-1995 as the Southern Africa radio correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and later on my own. The war took a terrible toll on civilians, mostly through the use of landmines, but also through murder and various forms of coercion. For a time, the civil war, extravagantly fueled by the US and the Soviet Union, with help from South Africa and Cuba, was known as “the worst war in the world.” Although that title has passed to other conflicts, Angola’s forty-one years of war remain a distinct chapter in the annals of human destruction. Read more →

A Q&A with Dr. OiYan Poon | I have been trying to write a book on Asian Americans and affirmative action since at least 2012. Each time I started, I couldn’t figure out who my intended audience was. As a result, my writing process kept stalling out. I was accustomed to writing for scholarly and technical audiences but had a hard time explaining things to wider audiences—people who are intelligent, curious, and civically engaged. Like many toddlers, my daughter started to ask a lot of questions when she became verbal. Read more →