Innholdsfortegnelse for June 17, 2019 i The Nation

A Nation of Elites? Katha Pollitt’s trenchant first-person account of the 1969 student strike at Harvard University [“Harvard’s Strike at 50,” May 20/27] raises a question about The Nation: Is everyone who works at your magazine a graduate of the Ivy League or the top 25 select liberal-arts schools? Having nothing better to do with my time, I Googled the undergraduate institutions of the 82 people listed on the masthead who contribute as editors, reporters, columnists, writers, or artists. It turns out that very few—about half a dozen—did not attend these types of institutions (and they are mostly graduates of state flagship universities). The coveted internship positions go to students who attended top-echelon institutions as well. There are many talented young people in state and private colleges across the country…

On May 18, Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled his plan to reshape public education in a speech in Orangeburg, South Carolina, not far from where the first of five desegregation cases that would eventually be combined into Brown v. Board of Education was filed. Sixty-five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. But with school segregation getting worse and an increasing number of schoolchildren living in poverty, it will be up to Congress and the next president to usher in an era of integrated, equitable, and child-centered public schools. Sanders would ban for-profit charter schools. Over the years, I have volunteered for and donated to Sanders’s campaigns, and in March I pitched a number of education-policy ideas to his current one, addressing…

As abortion bans spring up in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and elsewhere, it’s a good time to talk about men. Where are they? Polls show that in the United States there is little difference of opinion between men and women on abortion. According to Pew, 60 percent of women and 57 percent of men say abortion should be legal in “all or most cases.” But checking a box on a questionnaire doesn’t tell us much, because polls don’t measure intensity. There is no box for “sure, babe, whatever” or for “Yes! Abortion rights is the hill I would die on.” In my experience, there’s a big difference in intensity between genders on the pro-choice side. Men are all over the anti-abortion movement—staffing and running organizations, protesting at clinics, harassing…

You can identify the high point of Theresa May’s prime-ministerial tenure at just a few minutes before 10 pm on June 8, 2017. It was Election Day, and her Conservative Party was expected to trounce Labour. She had called the election holding a 21-percentage-point lead against a hopelessly riven Labour Party led by the left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. A resounding victory would give her room to maneuver as she negotiated Brexit with the European Union. She had run an awful campaign, but the dead weight of received wisdom still favored her without reservation or equivocation. With the polls scheduled to close at 10 pm, the pundits ran their mouths assuming no risk to reputation. “As exit poll looms, I repeat my prediction: Conservatives to win by 90-100 seat majority,” TV personality…

A mid the daily infamies of Donald Trump’s presidency, his worst dereliction of duty is his decision to accelerate the greatest threat facing this country: catastrophic climate change. Trump is called a climate denier. He is actually a warrior for climate calamity. In many ways, he is the first president of the climate-catastrophe era. We’ve already witnessed the terrors—the fires that recently ravaged California, the storms that savaged Houston and Puerto Rico, the floods in the Midwest, and the droughts that have forced millions to migrate from what used to be called the Fertile Crescent. Europeans responded to those terrors with action in the recent EU parliamentary elections, rewarding Green parties across the continent with their strongest results ever. Trump, however, has chosen to go all in on the side…

Donald Trump, who has long played fast and loose with measurements of his wealth, is no fan of numerical accuracy. But his administration’s latest move to monkey with economic data could have a devastating impact on the poor. The change is technical: The White House proposes to use a different definition of inflation to update the income level below which the federal government says someone lives in poverty. Right now, a family of four must have an income of $25,750 or less a year to qualify as poor. Instead of using the Consumer Price Index to update that figure, the administration wants to use the Chained CPI, which, rather than measure the price of a fixed set of goods, tries to factor in shifts to cheaper options as prices change.…

IT WAS NOVEMBER 11, 2015, AND MOHAMMAD SALAMEH HADN’T EATEN IN 34 DAYS. THE MORNING WAS stretching toward noon, and he was lying on a concrete platform that served as his bed when a team of guards dressed in riot gear appeared at his cell door and ordered him to cuff up. A week earlier, Salameh failed to comply with that demand—he’d been too weak to stand and walk to his door—so guards had entered his cell and dragged him out. Salameh didn’t want to be manhandled again, so he slowly pulled himself to his feet. He leaned against the wall and struggled slowly toward the guards. At his door, the force team attached irons to his legs and handcuffed him. They took him to the medical-treatment room, where a…

The American publishing industry does not skimp when it comes to Israel. It has provided us with bookshelves groaning with hagiographies of generations of Israeli leaders, acres of glossy coffee-table books lauding the Israeli miracle in the desert, and a plethora of studies of Israel and its relations with the world. In the last category, studies of Israel’s relationship with the United States have a special place. Most are informed by a deep sympathy with Israel and staunchly defend the closest possible partnership between the two countries, even if they are occasionally critical of each other’s excesses. Much of this writing is by political scientists or former diplomats, whether Israeli or American, and concentrates on diplomacy and strategy. The better books in this extensive literature have a narrow temporal focus,…

ACROSS 1 At first, acute pressure to back up claims (7) 5 Like one receiving a pension or new wheels? (7) 9 En route, I smuggled in bell (5) 10 Enterprising stratagem after disposing of initial debts (9) 11 Like a bit of sapphire amid mere counterfeit jewelry (10) 12 Computer person losing head with love, love, love… (4) 14 Commercial break without purpose (6) 16 Nerd goes around globe with no better than average means of access (8) 18 Perfume dispenser talking at a cheapskate (8) 19 Flat stone housing Kentucky research facility (6) 21 What you need to think without limits: money (4) 22 Written right to left in Avignon, the calfskin describes that object with many stories (10) 25 Sound arrangement of skeleton is outstanding (9) 26…

On May 23, the Federal Reserve released its annual report on the nation’s economic wellbeing, which showed that despite a growing economy, millions of Americans still live on the edge of financial disaster. 39% American adults who could not come up with $400 in an emergency 17% American adults who are unable to pay the current month’s bills 22% Student-loan borrowers who attended for-profit college and are now behind on their payments, compared with 8 percent who attended public institutions 24% American adults who skipped medical treatment in 2018 because of its expense 26% American adults without any retirement savings…

A Saudi ship loaded with weapons found its progress delayed during a stop in May in Genoa, Italy. In protest of Saudi Arabia’s alleged war crimes in Yemen, Italian union workers refused to load two generators onto the vessel, fearing that they could be used for military purposes. “We will not be complicit in what is happening in Yemen,” union leaders said in a statement. By refusing to comply with Saudi interests, the Genoese unions join a long tradition of anti-war and anti-imperialist actions by dockworkers. In 1920, as opposition to British rule over Northern Ireland boiled over, Irish workers in Dublin refused to unload munitions from British ships. Malaysian, Indian, Australian, and Singaporean dockworkers boycotted Dutch ships in the 1940s, in opposition to Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. In 1950,…

Graduate-student workers are bracing for an attack by the National Labor Relations Board. The conservative-controlled NLRB announced in May that it would issue a rule “determining whether students who perform services at a private college or university in connection with their studies are ‘employees.’” Student workers know what this means: that the Trump administration is gunning for their right to organize. Over the last two decades, the NLRB’s opinion on the classification of graduate-student workers has shifted with the party in power. By the end of the Clinton and Obama administrations, graduate students were recognized as workers. But under George W. Bush—and now likely Trump—they were considered individuals who should be compensated for their labor but, somehow, not workers. In an awkward but revealing turn of affairs, university presidents across…

ON A MILD SPRING EVENING IN MARCH, NOT FAR FROM THE SCREECH OF THE M TRAIN, MARTINA Romero climbed onto the stoop of her six-story tenement, clasped a microphone, and decried the ever-rising rents that threaten to displace her family of five. “I work to support my family, and I need to pay for my four kids, not just for rent,” she said in Spanish, staring out at scores of fellow renters who had turned out for a rally at her building in southern Williamsburg in Brooklyn. “That is why I am fighting, so that I won’t get any more rent increases.” As her audience howled and hissed, Romero described how her landlord exploited a loophole in New York City’s rent regulations to hike her monthly payments by hundreds of…