Essays
The Deaths Of Others: The Fact and Fiction of September 11 and Iraq The Forward
On September 19, 2001, an obscure Chicago politician was afforded three hundred words in the Hyde Park Herald to react to the September 11 attacks. “Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families,” he wrote, “I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy…We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad.” Nine years later… Read the full essay in The Forward.
The Rand Reconciliation: Why Liberals Should Love the Market Goddess Left of Liberal Magazine
Ayn Rand’s texts glorify the very individual creative freedom that is primary to liberals from Mill to Rawls. Why do liberals despise her? Read the full article, p. 4-8.
Occupy Wall Street: Democracy in Our Time? Oxford Left Review
“The Times They Are a-Changin’”, blasting from the centre of Zuccotti Park, was an appropriate sound to greet me as I approached the epicentre of the Occupy movement on a blustery autumn day last month. Indeed, ‘the order is rapidly fading’ in American politics.. Full article at Oxford Left Review, p. 54-59.
Shorts
‘The Only Language: Making New Worlds in Israel-Palestine’ "...as a young woman she dreamed of a vast Mosaic, jew christian muslim atheist other buddhist, call it what you will.” Read in the Tel Aviv Review of Books.
‘Deeper than the Abyss’: Resisting the Holocaust. The horrors of Treblinka are well known. That the camp was put out of use by the very Jews it was designed to murder is less often mentioned. Why have scholars underestimated organized Jewish resistance to the Holocaust? Read full article in the Oxford Cherwell.
Finding our Humanity in Syria. Interventionists are wrong to argue for action based on US interest. Humanitarian arguments should come first. Read the full article at International Policy Digest.
Left Behind: Reevaluating American Hegemony. Mid-2000s critics of American power imagined an E.U.-influenced world order in its place. But the past half-decade shows the alternative is far less sanguine. Read the full article at International Policy Digest.
Republicans’ Racist Rhetoric. Recent racial slip-ups on the GOP Presidential trail are not accidents. Read the full article at The Phoenix.
Reporting
Democracy in Zuccotti Park, newcivilrightsmovement.com “Nobody is lobbying for me to go to college, for me to have a job when I graduate. I can’t influence politicians.” Then he pointed upwards, to the financial institutions that contributed $155 million to both parties in 2008. “But they can.” Read the article newcivilrightsmovement.com
How to Read a Revolution. An interview with Iranian-American Shervin Malekzadeh about his participation in the Green Movement in Iran in 2009. Read the full interview at Hippo Reads.
Dear Nick Kristof: Your Palestinian Gandhis are Already Here. An intimate look into the Palestinian civil disobedience movement in the West Bank. Featured by the Huffington Post as one of 17 Things To Read If You're Trying To See All Sides Of The Israel-Gaza Conflict. Read the full article in Dissent Magazine.
Patience and Doubt Amidst Gradual Reform in Myanmar. Five months after Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won forty-three of forty-five seats in a parliamentary bi-election, Myanmar finds itself on the frustrating precipice of a yet realized democracy. Read the full article on International Policy Digest.
Occupying Identity? On Democracy with Larry Au. Hong Kong’s Occupy Central pro-democracy movement has created arguably the most embarrassing political moment for Beijing since Tiananmen Square in 1989. I interviewed Hong Kong democracy activist and researcher Larry Au about the Hong Kong traditions from which the movement drew its strength. Read the full article at New Bloom.