The Plot Against Europe May 9, 2022 — Standing on the viewing platform in Red Square, President Vladimir Putin observed the military parade commemorating the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. This Victory Day, he had reason to be especially proud of his country. Earlier that week, a group of 150 Russian special forces — bearing...
Growing Up at Yale In 2003, I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshman at Yale when the Afro-American Cultural Center invited the late Amiri Baraka to speak under its auspices. Baraka (né LeRoi Jones) had been a founder of the Black Arts Movement, Black Power’s artistic arm, but had more recently gained notoriety for his Sept. 11 themed poem “Somebody...
Finlandization is Not a Solution for Ukraine The Ukrainian crisis bears many similarities to the Cold War. Once again, Russian tanks have rolled across an international border. Central and Eastern European countries openly fear Moscow’s revanchist and imperial foreign policy. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, long ago prophesied to go “out of area or out of business”, has found new purpose deterring...
The Curious Case of Countries Where Being Gay is a Crime While the cause of gay rights has made remarkable progress in the United States over the past year—with recent court rulings in New Mexico and Utah mandating recognition of same-sex unions—the situation has been bleak in other corners of the world. Two weeks ago, the Ugandan parliament passed a long-debated bill imposing lifetime sentences for...
Child's Play The fairy-tale world of Model United Nations
A Farewell to Facebook A political animal, I have no plans to stop opining about the issues of the day. Just don’t expect me to engage with you about them on Facebook.
A Personal Reflection on Germany's Circumcision Debate I never imagined that my existence as a Jew in Germany would be challenged by an advertisement in the Berlin U-Bahn. But there it was, staring at me on the U2 line on my way home one afternoon, a small poster encased in the curvature of the train carriage roof. Visible was the fully clothed...