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(01/20/17 1:55pm)
Today, the man who promises to “make America great again” becomes our president. The inauguration of an individual who plans to shake-up or overhaul the status quo is not unprecedented, even in recent history. Barack Obama’s main campaign theme was change. Ronald Reagan proposed a major shift in the country’s course. However, both of these men had clear ideas about the institutional and ideological pillars of American greatness. In the “A More Perfect Union” speech, Obama portrayed his life story, possible “in no other country on Earth,” as a manifestation of America’s exceptionalism. Reagan spoke passionately about what made America the “shining city on a hill.” Donald Trump, for all his talk about returning the country to greatness, shows little appreciation of what made America exceptional in the first place. Unfortunately, he is far from alone.
(11/11/16 5:16pm)
On Tuesday night, the contrast between sorrowful tears and exultant cheers created a harrowing scene. Even more disturbing was that these emotional reactions fed off each other with each intensifying the other. The giddiness of Trump supporters isn’t simply rooted in the victory of their candidate, but also (and perhaps to a greater extent) in the distress of their political opponents. On Facebook, one of my friends wrote unabashedly of the schadenfreude he felt at the sight of liberals “tearing out their hair.”
(10/14/16 5:09am)
The second presidential debate fortified my fervent belief that Americans cannot allow Donald Trump to assume the highest office in our land. Trump’s severe incompetence was glaring in the incoherent, rambling sentences through which he attempted to convey uninformed ideas. The gratification Trump seemed to experience when he told Hillary Clinton that she’d be jailed if he was President—quite similar to the satisfaction with which he once uttered the words “you’re fired”—was yet another indication of the megalomania that possesses this man. While defeating Trump on Nov. 8 needs to be the plan in the short run, in the longer term, the country needs to address the widespread anger and fear—primarily found in the white working-class—that has fueled Trump’s success.
(09/30/16 1:43pm)
After World War II, the United States and other advanced democracies pushed for the integration of the global economy spurring a process that has improved the lives of billions of people. Trade barriers came down and security networks embraced a growing percentage of the world’s nations. Even former adversaries such as Japan, and eventually China, joined this system of open trade that prompted unprecedented peace and prosperity. Yet, the primary force behind all of this remarkable progress—namely, globalization—has never been so reviled.
(09/02/16 4:27pm)
On October 1, 2016, China’s currency will join the US Dollar, Euro, Japanese Yen and British Pound in a unique and highly selective unit of account—the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Right, or SDR. The Renminbi’s inclusion in the SDR follows a concerted, multi-year lobbying effort by Chinese authorities along with challenging deliberations by the IMF’s Executive Board. It marks a major milestone in China’s ascension in the global financial system, and sets the RMB on a path to becoming a major reserve currency, widely owned by other central banks as part of their foreign exchange arsenals.
(06/02/16 9:02am)
For the past semester, I chose to organize my columns around the theme of “individuals and institutions” and will continue to do so in the fall. Therefore, I thought it might be helpful if I clarified the meaning and the assumptions behind this theme (although this goal might have been accomplished more easily with a group text to my parents).
(04/19/16 6:06am)
On April 6, Duke Students and Workers in Solidarity demanded a series of improvements to the treatment of university employees, which include a gradual increase to the minimum wage these employees can be paid. I believe that the members of DSWS do not completely understand the benefits (yes, the benefits) their movement has over other minimum wage movements (such as the Fight for 15) that they support and seek to emulate.
(04/05/16 6:12am)
My view of Islam was profoundly affected by a trip I made to Speaker’s Corner this past summer. Speaker’s Corner is a small part of London’s Hyde Park, where any individual can begin a discourse about an issue of his or her choosing and then be challenged by the surrounding crowd. Over the course of the four hours I spent marveling at this spectacular—and, at times, disturbing—manifestation of free speech, I heard a radical Christian pastor proclaim that all non-believers were destined for hell and an imam defend the stoning of adulterers as God’s law.
(03/22/16 5:01am)
Many of the problems Donald Trump has focused on in his campaign are not fictitious. To claim so only further alienates a segment of the American population who already feels forgotten by our political system.Though the real estate tycoon identifies legitimate issues, his proposed solutions not only fail to deal with their targets; they also generate enormous collateral damage.
(03/08/16 7:14am)
Imagine if a world-renowned biologist fundamentally disagreed with the basic theories and models underlying the core Molecular Biology course at Duke. Though it would be very worrisome, any biology major will tell you that their discipline doesn’t face such a problem. Unfortunately, as an economics major, I cannot say the same thing.
(02/23/16 5:57am)
The 2016 presidential campaign has been full of surprises. Among the greatest is the support Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders has garnered. Senator Sanders believes America must abandon one of its ideological pillars—capitalism—to redress social and economic inequities. His vision has proven compelling for many. It is also dangerous and wrong.
(01/26/16 6:10am)
The independence declared by the United States in 1776 was not just political; it was also ideological. Separating itself from class societies the globe over, the new republic asserted “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The American idea expressly minimizes the importance of birth conditions, while maximizing that of exertion, in the determination of an individual’s outcome. And our constitution expressly institutionalizes liberties—speech, religion, rights of assembly—which promote mobility, appeal to an innate sense of justice and mute popular disaffections that historically preluded upheaval and chaos.
