This is the time of year for reflections, and I’m certainly no exception to the rule. So here goes (though I don’t usually talk much about myself on this blog): In 2009, I finished studying abroad at the London School of Economics and fell even more deeply in love with London and LSE. I also…
I ran across this really excellent post the other day, by Lola Adesioye. I love this quote from her: I have spent many column inches and airtime talking about the shoulda, woulda and the couldas of life. And don’t get me wrong – I enjoy it! But I also ask myself how much of a…
I just ran across this fascinating Time interview with Stephen Rapp, who was previously chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (H/T Shelby Grossman). Rapp states: The concern all of us had was that we were conducting justice in a comfortable courtroom with long trials and well-paid attorneys. Prisoners had single cells, and…
I have just put down “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books” (It was a very disjointed book; I don’t recommend it unless you are an enormous fan of James, Nabokov, Austen, Fitzgerald. Even then, I believe her analysis of these works is somewhat cursory.) The book is about oppression during the Islamic Republic…
Maybe it’s just me, but I increasingly see a problem with activism: it can easily slip from passion to elitism. I’ll be honest; as I became more passionate about human rights issues, I started feeling incredibly upset. I started wondering: “Why doesn’t everyone else care? How can they hear about genocide, conflict, women’s rights, torture,…
I ran across this interesting quote recently in this report: Reverend Miguel d’Escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, President of the General Assembly, tried to frame the dialogue with a “concept paper” that argued that R2P was just colonialism in a new package. D’Escoto wrote that the correct way to eliminate genocide and other mass atrocities was…
Happy Friday, everyone! I am most certainly very happy this Friday because I have handed in all my final papers, finished 3 fellowship applications, and am officially DONE with Fall Quarter 2009. Yep, I’m one step closer to graduation (and hopefully one step closer to getting an awesome fellowship/job and not one step closer to…
I wanted to briefly post these two talks, which I absolutely absolutely loved recently. 1. Shashi Tharoor, on India’s “soft power” Click here to watch it (unfortunately TED won’t let me embed it for some strange reason). Shashi Tharoor was elected to India’s parliament in May 2009, representing Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala as minister for external affairs….
Sorry guys, I really wanted to do a Feature Friday today but honestly, I do not have the time. Finals are next week, I’m frantically writing papers and cramming information into my brain for exams, and I’m running around trying to last-minute finish Fellowship applications! Thus I’ll probably won’t be posting anything very interesting or…
Today is World AIDS Day, and I wanted to highlight this issue. 33.4 million people live with HIV worldwide, and there were 2.7 million new cases in 2008. What can you do about this? You can donate to and help great organizations like GlobeMed and FACE AIDS which are mobilizing college students across the U.S….
