Tag: college students
A Rebellion in Yale’s Secret Societies
One evening in 2019, in a windowless building known as the “tomb” in the center of Yale’s campus, the members of Skull and Bones snapped. There they were, having been granted membership to the most elite secret society at one of the most elite universities in the world—part of a rare group that for generations included individuals from the most powerful families on the planet. Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Buckleys have all been in Skull and Bones. Three Bonesmen would
The juvenile viciousness of campus anti-Semitism
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Many students who think they’re protesting against Israeli policy are actually engaging in anti-Semitism, spewing hatred in a way that will change them as people and alter their lives.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
Moral Rot
Many of America’s
Spiders Might Be Quietly Disappearing
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.
Jumping spiders are an obsession for me. But it wasn’t always so.
Although never a spider hater or an arachnophobe, I was pretty ambivalent about them for most of my life. Then I learned about jumping spiders: I’ve reported on their impressive vision (as good as a cat’s in some ways!), their surprising smarts (they make plans!), and the discovery that they have REM-like sleep (and may even dream!). I was hooked.
I
David Brooks: The New Old Age
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Anne Kenner worked for many years as a federal prosecutor, first in the Eastern District of New York, and then in the Northern District of California, trying mobsters and drug dealers. “I like the hairy edge,” she told me. Her job was meaningful to her; it made
The Failure of Affirmative Action
Most of my colleagues are college-educated. I am often the only product of felons, addicts, and foster care whom my peers have encountered outside of time spent volunteering in homeless shelters and group homes. Over the years, whenever affirmative action in higher education has come under threat, these folks have offered their sympathies. They believe that I—a child of a Black father and white mother who grew up in poverty and instability—feel the attacks more acutely. Most Americans seem to
Of Course Instant Groceries Don’t Work
More than 20 years ago, as the rubble of the dot-com boom was still smoking, Wired magazine published an autopsy of the grocery-delivery start-up Webvan. The company had just filed for bankruptcy after evaporating the better part of a billion dollars of investment funds in about a year and a half, and the tale of its downfall opens with a sentence that, in retrospect, is pretty funny: “In the sober days of 2001, it’s hard to imagine a time when
Pandemic Parenting’s Crisis of Inequality
At the start of the 2020 lockdown, we had a 3-year-old who needed near-constant supervision. My third grader, in public school, generally had about an hour’s worth of unchallenging remote lessons a day. We were grateful that our downstairs tenant, who lives alone and is a freelancer, agreed to share a bubble with us and provide 20 hours a week of child care in exchange for a break on rent.
My husband has a challenging job and makes more
There May Be a Blunt-Force Fix for Inflation
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Pick your poison: high inflation or a recession. Which would you prefer and why?
Send responses to [email protected] or reply to this email.
Conversations of Note
What if the Fed raised interest rates by 2 percentage
Where Did the Internet Challenge Go?
Ten years ago this month, the Harvard men’s baseball team put a video on YouTube in which they danced and lip-synched to Carly Rae Jepsen’s No. 1 hit, “Call Me Maybe.” It was funny because, well, you know: They were muscle-y boys with serious jawlines, and they were doing choreography that involved punching the ceiling of a van; this was back when a lot of people thought that pop songs were really stupid and for girls. So the video got
Globalism Is Good Actually – The Atlantic
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced a ban on importing Russian oil and natural gas into the United States, arguing that the new economic sanction would strike a “powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.” He