Tag: safe space
Should Democrats Stick With Biden?
Plus: controversy over a talk about racial color-blindness
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf 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 Democrats stick with Joe Biden or replace him with a younger presidential nominee in 2024?
Send your responses to
When a Friendship Is a Faith Community
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.
This week she talks with three people who met at a college-campus ministry. Although they don’t share superficial interests, such as movie tastes, they share a commitment to their faith and to one another. They discuss how they were struggling to make friends when they met, how the churches they’ve
Elnathan John on Satire and Cancel Culture
Few observers of global discourse range as widely as Elnathan John, the novelist, satirist, and lawyer who frequently participates online and off in conversations about art, politics, and culture pertaining to at least three continents. His novel, Born on a Tuesday, is a coming-of-age story set in his native Nigeria. In Becoming Nigerian: A Guide, he tried his hand at satire.
Today, John lives in Berlin, where, in addition to writing, he works with academic institutions to foster
Instead of ‘Defund the Police,’ Solve All Murders
After George Floyd’s murder, when sweeping criminal-justice reforms seemed more possible than ever, many Black Lives Matter activists and their allies settled on a rallying cry: “Defund the Police.”
That choice was a disaster. The slogan—shorthand for cutting spending on law enforcement and redirecting it toward social services, or, for more radical proponents, moving toward eventual police abolition—is a political liability, largely due to justified fears that, if implemented, it would lead to many more murders, assaults, and other violent