himwhynot

Monica Potts asks whether pushing higher education for everyone is actually making it tougher for poor students to enter the middle class. But when talking about expanding access to college and increasing the number of Americans with degrees, it’s useful to ask, to paraphrase another president: “Is our children learning?” According to a new study […]

Wided Khadraoui talks to As’ad AbuKhalil about recent events in Lebanon. What role did Obama play in this? Obama played a big role: Through his assistant secretary of state for Near East, Jeffrey Feltman, who has had years of experience in controlling [the] coalition in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Israel. It is not a […]

Sam Rosenfeld talks about Joseph L. Rauh, a liberal MVP. If the name Joseph L. Rauh Jr. doesn’t ring any bells for you, don’t feel too guilty. In the nearly six decades he toiled as a liberal political activist and lawyer in Washington, D.C., Rauh (rhymes with “brow”) never wrote a book or carved out […]

Gershom Gorenberg says there’s a limit to how long a fragile democracy like Israel can maintain an undemocratic regime next door, in occupied territory, before democracy at home is corrupted. I know that the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch didn’t intend his classic play, God of Vengeance, as an allegory about Israel and the impact of […]

Adam Serwer says that in the wake of the Obama administration’s missteps, it’s easy to forget just how bipartisan an issue closing Gitmo once was. Next week marks the second anniversary of President Barack Obama’s executive order closing the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay — but Gitmo’s closure has never seemed less likely. It’s easy […]

Paul Waldman says we’re beginning to take a long overdue look at the state of our political debate. But that examination needs to be honest. In the wake of Saturday’s tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, we’re beginning to take a long overdue look at the state of our political debate. But that examination needs to […]

Michelle Goldberg writes that the alleged shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords may have been mentally ill, but his hallucinatory fantasy world was informed by the real one. For the past two years, our political life has been charged with intimations of violence. Tea Party activists have brandished guns at meetings with elected officials. (In 2009, […]

Michelle Alexander explains how mass incarceration turns people of color into permanent second-class citizens. The first time I encountered the idea that our criminal-justice system functions much like a racial caste system, I dismissed the notion. It was more than 10 years ago in Oakland when I was rushing to catch the bus and spotted […]

Neal Gabler says that, like most liberals, Obama resists entering the darkened theater that Reagan mastered. Most people seem to agree that the single greatest mystery of the Obama presidency is how a candidate who stoked hope, raised expectations, and stirred tens of millions of Americans to embrace change became a president who banked the […]

Mark Goldberg says the international anti-genocide movement that began in the wake of Darfur could prevent the next crisis in Sudan. On Jan. 9, South Sudanese citizens will head to the polls to vote on a referendum to determine if South Sudan will become a country independent from the rest of Sudan. That the southerners […]