Tag: recent decades
Nothing Defines America’s Social Divide Like a College Education
Updated at 5:17 p.m. ET on October 4, 2023
Inequality is one of the great constants. But what sets those at the top of society apart from those at the bottom has varied greatly. In some times and places, it was race; in others, “noble” birth. In some, physical strength; in others, manual dexterity. In America today, most of these factors still matter. The country is racially unequal. Some people inherit great wealth; others become celebrities through sporting prowess.
The Alchemy of the Ivies
A renowned political philosopher, Amy Gutmann was in some ways an inspired choice to serve as President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Germany. Over the course of a long and fruitful academic career, she has made enormous contributions to the theory of deliberative democracy, identity politics, and the role of educational institutions in a pluralistic society, lines of inquiry that are as urgent as ever on both sides of the Atlantic. And in the thick of Russia’s war in Ukraine, there
The Reinvention of the Catholic Church
In May 2021, a time when public gatherings in England were strictly limited because of the coronavirus pandemic, the British tabloids were caught off guard by a stealth celebrity wedding in London. Westminster Cathedral—the “mother church” of Roman Catholics in England and Wales—was abruptly closed on a Saturday afternoon. Soon the groom and bride arrived: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds, a Catholic and a former Conservative Party press officer with whom he had fathered a child the
Truffles Are Everywhere Now – The Atlantic
This article was originally published in Knowable Magazine.
Every morning, for three months of the year, Lola wakes up at 8 and goes hunting. She races past oak trees, running at full speed through a 50-hectare field set in the southern end of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The daily challenge—to find her elusive prey—never fails to excite her. She darts from place to place until faltering at last: 40 minutes into her day, she gets distracted or simply
The Real Reason Democrats Are Losing Ground on Education
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
Should America go “all in” on public schools, or should parents have the ability to direct the tax dollars that fund their child’s education to the public or private school of their choice? Please share your
The Most Important Study in the Abortion Debate
The demographer Diana Greene Foster was in Orlando last month, preparing for the end of Roe v. Wade, when Politico published a leaked draft of a majority Supreme Court opinion striking down the landmark ruling. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, would revoke the constitutional right to abortion and thus give states the ability to ban the medical procedure.
Foster, the director of the Bixby Population Sciences Research Unit at UC San Francisco, was at a meeting of
Idaho’s Cobalt Rush Is Here
On September 13, I took my first plane trip in 18 months: Kansas City to Boise with a layover in Denver. The trip itself was largely uneventful, with one exception. After I boarded my connecting flight in Denver, a pilot announced that we would be briefly delayed because Air Force One was also en route to Boise. President Biden was responding to yet another record-setting wildfire season, during which 5.3 million acres of the U.S., an area the
The Ohio Republicans Trying to Out-Trump One Another
In another lifetime, Representative Anthony Gonzalez was the Ohio Republican Party’s dream candidate. Many of his future suburban-Cleveland constituents cheered for him at Byers Field when he was a high-school-football standout at St. Ignatius, and later again at the Shoe in Columbus during his star turn as an Ohio State University wide receiver. The son of a Cuban immigrant, he was a first-round NFL draft pick and went on to graduate from Stanford’s business school. Gonzalez ran for Congress