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News
Eliot Spitzer’s ethics lesson? What the headlines didn’t say about his recent appearance at Harvard<br />
Has America lost its way during the tumult of the financial crisis, driven to government excess by angry populism? Or has the sobering effect of instability and loss lifted a fog that had obscured the debate on policy objectives? To former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer '84, the crisis has revealed the fundamental necessity of government involvement in the marketplace as an enforcer of transparency, integrity, and competition, as a regulator of externalities, and as a source of core social values that will not be guaranteed by the market. "Only government can force rules related to transparency and integrity upon the market." But Spitzer sees the present moment as full of both opportunity and hazard. "Angry populism is no better guide for rational intervention than is Ayn Rand libertarianism."
News
Israel’s Bedouin villages struggle for existence<br />
When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the new government expelled approximately 50,000 Bedouins, a semi-nomadic and pastoral community, from their homes in the Negev Desert. Others fled into the surrounding countries. In the 1960s, the Israeli government began transferring the remaining Negev Bedouins to permanent, state-built townships. Though these areas now have approximately 90,000 residents, an additional 80,000 Bedouins continue to live in unrecognized villages. The government views unrecognized villages as illegal settlements and refuses to provide services such as running water, electricity, schools and hospitals. This illegal status leaves many Bedouins in constant fear that their homes will be demolished or that they will be forced to relocate.
News
Theatre: “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Drama Society’s Fall farce, serves insanity spiked with homicide<br />
A cup of tea. Some finger sandwiches. A plate of roast beef with a glass of elderberry wine. Sweet merciful wine. Joseph Kesserling's Arsenic and Old Lace takes the simple pleasures of American family life and transmogrifies them into the absurd veneer of a family of homicidal psychotics. This combination of banality and madness proved to be an excellent choice for the HLS Drama Society's fall show, produced by Greg LeSaint '11 and directed by Kristin Kramer '10. While HLS students may sometimes feel trapped within a fiction that is simultaneously hum-drum and permeated by paranoia, it sometimes takes a well-written drama to put things in perspective.
News
French secularist defends country’s ban on religious items in schools<br />
"How is it that the terrible French, passing racist, sexist laws, are [also passing laws that are] working out better than [those in] the rest of Europe?" This provocative question was raised by Patrick Weil, who, in 2003 and 2004, participated in a commission under former French President Jacques Chirac to determine how France should respond to the harassment of Muslim girls who went without hijabs, also known as headscarves, in schools.
News
Ames finals: Posner affirms that “meat is murder”<br />
The marketplace of ideas has hit the road. In a case which revolved around a proposed license plate bearing the slogan, "Meat is Murder", the highest court in the Ames competition has upheld limits on the discretion of the State of Ames to reject the license plate design proposed by the fictional vegan group Humans Against Consumption of Animals (HACA). Judges Richard Posner '62 (7th Cir.), Diane Wood (7th Cir.), and Barrington Daniels Parker, Jr. (2d Cir.) presided.
News
Release of citizen held in immigration detention highlights difficulties for others<br />
Thanks to the help of Harvard Law School volunteers, an HLS alumna, and a Stanford law grad, a U.S. citizen mistakenly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held among regular prisoners was released after a monthlong detention. But detainees in the Boston area will continue to rely on the seven attorneys and handful of volunteers who get in to see them once a month.
News
Rise in Colombia extrajudicial killings may be linked to pressures on military<br />
Through a translator, Martha Giraldo spoke about the impunity enjoyed by the government actors carrying out extrajudicial killings of Colombian civilians. According to human rights organizations, the Colombia military killed 535 civilians between January 2007 and June 2008. Extrajudicial killings have increased dramatically over the last few years, a rise many attribute to the implementation of a "democratic security policy" designed to fight guerillas and insurgents.
Opinion
Cross-registration woes: does Harvard “University” even exist?<br />
Sadly, the challenges of registering into law school courses pale in comparison to the daunting feat of cross-registration between Harvard schools. At least part of the problem seems to be that Harvard's various schools operate less like organs of a single body than as independent organisms that hardly acknowledge one another's existence.
News
Lessig’s focus on corruption may have uncomfortable implications for Harvard<br />
Professor Lawrence Lessig's new focus on institutional corruption is now hitting home, as a Harvard Alumni Association event last week demonstrated. Lessig, head of the new Institutional Corruption initiative within the Edward Safra Foundation for Ethics, was accompanied by Linda Greenhouse, former New York Times Supreme Court correspondent, who quesitoned Harvard President Drew Faust on the university's own miscreant behavior.
Opinion
Cambridge, USA: The boy who doesn’t sleep<br />
After spending a relaxing year in the U.K., JESSICA CORSI thought she had re-acclimatized herself to Harvard Law School's culture of crazed workaholism – until she came upon a 1L who likes to trade the refreshment of sleep for more reading. Is insomnia, she wonders, the secret to securing the Sears Prize?
Opinion
“Mumbai” is terrorized by linguistic chauvanism. Bring back “Bombay”!<br />
On November 9th, Indian democracy plunged to its nadir. Elected legislators of the Maharashtra Nav Nirman Sena Party (MNS) rushed to the floor of Maharashtra state's Legislative Assembly to stop the elected member of the Samajwadi Party, Abu Asim Azmi, from taking oath in Hindi, the country's official and most widely-spoken language. They demanded that he take the oath in Marathi, the language of the Marathi people of Maharashtra, whose cause the MNS seeks to espouse. This was followed by MNS legislator Ravi Kadam slapping Azmi in full view of the public gathering – and it follows a similar incident that took place just a few weeks ago, when the same party threatened noted film producer Karan Johar for using the word "Bombay" instead of the Marathi "Mumbai" in his new movie, Wake up Sid.