Politics
The Context of Radical Islam
May 13, 2013 | Rohit Islamic radicalism is one of those issues that the American media always completely fails to properly analyze. Recall back to the aftermath of 9/11 - the airwaves were cluttered with talk about "why do they hate us?" and the "clash of civilizations" and other polarizing, binary rhetoric. I actually Read More
Please, Don’t Frack My Mother!
April 11, 2013 | Hanna Morris http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfymhAEe-TM “You can do anything that you want to do…just please, don’t frack my mother!” This lyrical ballad written by Sean Lennon and featuring notable celebrities ranging from Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Yoko Ono to Adrian Grenier, has generated a rather hostile Read More
How Debate Destroys Communication: Six Principles of Effective Argumentation
April 11, 2013 | Grant Suk “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” Read More
Rage Against the Japanese
April 7, 2013 | Sarah Tang If you keep up with foreign politics like a good Berkeley student does, you may have heard about the China's renewed animosity towards Japan sparked by a territorial dispute over a group of small rocky islands near Taiwan that the Chinese call Diaoyu and the Japanese call Senkaku. The contention Read More
Reflecting on Robert Reich, Part III: Class Struggle
March 30, 2013 | Rohit This is Part III of a three-part reflection on an interview with Robert Reich. You can read the full transcript here, and you can pick up a free copy of Caliber to read the feature article on the interview. This part contains a discussion of the general politics and social change - specifically, Read More
The High Price of Free Speech
March 24, 2013 | Grant Suk If there were a vote to eliminate the world’s greatest achievements, in first place would be secularism, followed closely by free speech. The latter is commonly used as a staircase to reach and chip away at the former, though attacks on free speech – previously utilized primarily by religious fundamentalists Read More
Rob Portman and the Tipping Point
March 18, 2013 | Meg Elison | One Comment In 2008, the battle for marriage equality came to California. There were demonstrations and speeches, there were cold-calls and sermons, and there were signs on everyone’s lawns. The fight was ugly and it pitted churches against their own members, families against their own children, and an unprovable Read More
