Liberal Culture

Poland will be fine (interview with Mark Blyth)

Political economist Mark Blyth in an interview with Liberal Culture, "Poland will be fine. It's not like the investments are going to stop going into countries outside the eurozone. You just have to convert it from one currency to another."
The emergence of a military junta — the three generals Trump said he would defer to for foreign policy choices — should be a cause for concern because they may not be best equipped to make decisions on America's long term interests, according to Senior Fellow Stephen Kinzer.
Senior Fellow Tim Edgar wrote an op-ed about the implications of Edward Snowden's decision to disclose National Security Agency practices and why any reforms of the NSA's surveillance programs must protect the privacy of all people around the world, not just those of American nationality.
As Texans worry about the potential health effects from the flooded plant that led to a massive fire, political scientist Jeff Colgan wrote in his most recent op-ed that this type of incident is called a 'knock-on' effect of climate change and that political fights are likely to ensue over whose responsible for other 'knock-on' effects as the climate continues to warm.
Choices Program Brown University

Choices Program offers new lesson on Charlottesville

In wake of recent events, The Choices Program introduced a new Teaching with the News lesson entitled "History in Dispute: Charlottesville and Confederate Monuments."
The Costs of War project cited in the Washington Post, "This is in addition to about $212.6 billion in direct spending to care for war veterans since 2001, when terrorists' attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon triggered U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. That figure is an estimate by Neta C. Crawford, a political-science professor at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University."
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Understanding Climate Engineering (written by Deborah Gordon)

Deborah Gordon on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "There is no doubt that a rapid rise in the earth's temperature will impose high costs on not only our environment and health but also our economic and physical security. In recognition, most nations have committed to significant mitigation efforts. But will these collective efforts be enough?"
Children whose parents belong to the top 1 percent of the income ladder are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League university, according to a new paper published in the National Bureau for Economic Research. The paper is co-authored by John N. Friedman, an associate professor of international and public affairs, and economics.
Commentary by columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. on shifting relationships among Americans, particularly in neighborhoods, focuses on work by Marc Dunkelman, a Watson Institute fellow who wrote "The Vanishing Neighbor" in 2014.
The Indian Express

The Nitish echo (written by Ashutosh Varshney)

Ashutosh Varshney, professor of political science, wrote an op-ed about Nitish Kumar's pragmatic choice to enter an alliance with the BJP political party in India and how it might influence other alliances.
Elias Muhanna in The New Yorker, "Mashrou' Leila, the biggest alt-rock band in the Middle East, was formed in 2008 by several students at the American University of Beirut. The group's early songs—ironic, grungy jams about the nettlesome oppression of bourgeois Lebanese society—made them famous in Beirut's indie scene."
Anthropologist Sarah Besky in The Hindu, "Understanding Gorkhaland requires understanding its underlying histories. In many ways, the Gorkhas of Darjeeling have yet to taste the liberation of India's Independence."