It was August in Lithuania. I, twenty-four years old, sat on the floor with the other students. We spoke in Yiddish among ourselves, but our voices were kept soft; the authorities couldn’t know about our meeting. A man with a beard, a noted scholar, stood up and told us why he had not spoken with [...]
How our troops should approach waging the war in Afghanistan by building trust with locals
After several years of lenses pointed solely on Iraq, and two years of adoration over a Chicago politician who would end up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the realities of a land that most Americans didn’t even know existed before 9/11 [...]
Some opinions on the age old question
In Why Are Jews Liberal?, longtime Commentary Magazine editor-in-chief and Congressional Medal of Honor awardee Norman Podhoretz attempts to provide a definitive answer to one of the most perplexing anomalies in American politics. After all, considering their choice of professions and traditionally strong family values, Jews seem odd candidates [...]
Only schoolyard bullies used to make you feel miserable when you didn’t do anything wrong
A certain English playwright of some notable success once remarked, “all the world’s a stage… and one man in his time plays many parts.” Though his time upon this world has long since passed, one can only assume that his grave [...]
Your boss suggests you maybe consider wearing tasteful skirts to work instead of your usual pantsuits.
Civil rights violation? A male classmate brushes his hand against your knee in a misguided, though innocent attempt at flirting.
Sexual harassment? “The scissors went down between [the girl’s] legs and the man cut off [her] inner labia and clitoris. [She] [...]
Prom night gone horribly wrong
Nowadays, Hamas is often in the news, alternately described as a militant group and as the democratically elected government of the Palestinians in Gaza. Both are accurate.
If you enter the word “Hamas” into a search engine, you’ll find that Hamas sees itself as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a [...]
Chicken Little is at it again. Climate change has become a centerpiece of today’s social consciousness, and has demanded the immediate attention of the industrialized world. Countless meetings, summits, and poolside discussions have been held in an effort to save our world from this impending catastrophe. But maybe you shouldn’t trade your car in for [...]
It always feels good to know that we’re helping to save the environment by buying energy-efficient and clean products. That is why we should not buy hybrid cars.
Hybrids obviously use electricity in place of large amounts of polluting fossil fuels, but to judge the car by its fuel usage alone leaves out the cost in [...]
Having studied abroad in Ireland for the duration of this year, I’ve come to appreciate the good-natured and humorous attitudes held by our other neighbors across the pond. Everyone has a story to share, a joke to tell, and a drink to finish. My friends are constantly pulling my leg, a social behavior that helps [...]
Most of us in the UCLA community agree that global warming is real, so I’m not going to waste too much time explaining that, but for those skeptics out there, consider these facts. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, worldwide, the average temperature has risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880. Additionally, several studies [...]
France: the country of food and wine and free time. So they figured out that unspecified amounts of butter in any dish is delicious, big deal. Obvious right? Well how about their transition to nuclear energy? Is it equally obvious to choose a form of energy that is efficient, clean, safe, and possibly our answer [...]