25 years after the beginning of the Romanian Revolution. I am standing in the University Plaza in Bucharest. My memory is channeling echoes of gun shots and student resistance; the smell of perspiration…
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On November 24, two weeks before the Senate Intelligence Committee released its “torture report,” Reprieve, a UK-based human rights NGO, published the results of its latest investigation into President…
The mere presence or absence of a camera does not deter violent behavior. We know this through decades of research on CCTV demonstrating that video monitoring has little to no effect on violent crime and…
Drilling in the Marcellus Shale, and in other unconventional oil and gas formations across the US, has led to a boom in domestic natural gas and oil production -– largely due to advances in high volume…
As an historian who grew up in the Caribbean and who has been researching and traveling to Cuba since it was still a Soviet dependent, I have been asked frequently in the last few days my impression of…
No US president ever said what President Obama told the American people on December 17, 2014. He also spoke to the people of Cuba, the ordinary citizens who struggle to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner…
Voluntary programs are all the rage. From ratcheting up cybersecurity to fighting obesity, firms in the United States and elsewhere voluntarily make pledges to do better than governmental regulation. Firms…
On Wednesday, the White House announced that the United States would resume diplomatic relations with Cuba in a deal that was brokered with a great deal of help from the Holy See. A statement released…
The resetting of US Cuba relations has been a long time in the making but without the Alan Gross case it is likely it would have happened sooner. I think both sides have thought long and hard about what…
The action by President Obama to move toward the normalization of US-Cuba relations is long overdue. The US ruptured ties with Cuba in early January 1961, under President Eisenhower, not only in the context…
The use of lethal force by police officers in Ferguson and Staten Island has raised many concerns about the dynamic between police and citizens and underlined the fact that all time favorite fictional…
Privacy is often thought of as the right to be left alone. Yet, our lives are embedded in relationships – with people, with corporations, with government, and with technological devices – that can’t be…
Recent social unrest across the country protesting the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the police chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York has reopened wounds and revealed deeply…
The release of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program documents the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) against terrorism…
The Senate report on torture found that the “enhanced techniques” used by the CIA were ineffective as a mechanism for gathering intelligence. In fact, the report stated there was no actionable intelligence…
Michael Brown’s recent shooting death by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson illustrates the pressing importance of digitally documenting police activity, while Eric Garner’s case illustrates the limits…
Abraham Lincoln said that those who shape public opinion exert an even greater influence than judges and lawmakers. In recent years popular sentiment – on issues like marriage equality and legalization…
At first glance it appears that the Arab uprisings have strengthened Al-Qaeda and similar groups that fly the black banner. With the possible exception of Tunisia, the rest of the “Arab Spring” countries…
The United States had just gone through a bruising election, but in Congress Democratic and Republican leaders gathered to unveil the bust of Vaclav Havel, the playwright and first post-Communist Czech…
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
The most serious attempt to bring the Syrian regime and representatives of the opposition together around a negotiating table together took place at the 2014 Geneva II peace talks. The talks were based…
Now that the grand jury has decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year old man, there remain many questions about this grand jury and generally…
In late November, the Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis is going to visit the United States of America for the World Meeting of Families that will take place in Philadelphia at the end of September 2015…
There has been a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s November 20 executive order concerning the implementation of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (as amended…
‘Am I still a citizen of Nigeria? The soldiers are watching or running while thousands are being slaughtered.’ – Mohammed, a graduate student at the University of Maiduguri speaking at a food distribution…