Author: Lance Garrison
There’s no way of knowing what could have happened if Ms. Swift’s masters hadn’t been sold. All we know is what happened next. In early August, Ms. Swift posted a rainbow-glazed photo of a series of friendship bracelets, one of which says “PROUD” with beads in the color of the bisexual pride flag. Queer people recognize that this word, deployed this way, typically means that someone is proud of their own identity. But the public did not widely view this as Ms. Swift’s coming out.Then, Vogue released an interview with Ms. Swift that had been conducted in early June. When…
Last September, tech’s biggest names trekked to Capitol Hill for a forum on artificial intelligence. In a meeting closed to journalists, executives briefed nearly two-thirds of the Senate on the future of A.I. A few respected labor and civic leaders were present, but the tech titans dominated the headlines.There’s an assumption in Silicon Valley that the first trillionaire may well be an A.I. entrepreneur, so tech leaders were eager to share their thoughts on some rules of the road. They warned of killer robots and the “Terminator” scenario, of misinformation and fake videos but gave short shrift to broader issues…
Enough. It’s time to apply the plain language of the Constitution to Trump’s actions and remove him from the ballot — without fear of the consequences. Republics are not maintained by cowardice.To understand the necessity of removing Trump, let’s go first to the relevant language from the 14th Amendment and then to some basic rules of legal interpretation. Here’s the language:“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member…
Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard who announced her resignation on Tuesday after her problematic congressional testimony about antisemitism and mounting questions about missing citations and quotation marks in her published work, was, in part, pushed out by political forces beyond academia and hostile to it.But the campaign against her was never truly about her testimony or accusations of plagiarism.It was a political attack on a symbol. It was a campaign of abrogation. It was and is a project of displacement and defilement meant to reverse progress and shame the proponents of that progress.As Janai Nelson, the president of the…
To the Editor:Re “Gay Resigns After Charges of Plagiarism” (front page, Jan. 3):I’m saddened by the news of Claudine Gay’s resignation as president of Harvard. Saddened not because I have any sympathy for her as a result of her terrible congressional testimony or the plagiarism accusations leveled against her. I don’t.I’m saddened because her resignation is a stark reminder of how treacherous public life can be and how many talented and capable people are discouraged from seeking careers in public service or other highly visible positions because of the divisiveness permeating our society.Just consider how many elected officials are voluntarily…
On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness,…
I’m glad New York City is about to start charging vehicles for crowding the streets of Manhattan, and I say that as a New Jersey resident — a member of the bridge and tunnel crowd — who will be paying a fat toll whenever I drive into the congestion zone in Manhattan.I take a bus to work in the city via the Lincoln Tunnel, but I also drive into Manhattan at times, mostly on weekends. So I’m one of the perpetrators of vehicular congestion. I get why it’s a bad thing, and I get why charging for entering the zone…
On the end-of-year lists, Ozempic keeps taking top honors for achievements in science. But in our new golden age of medicine, one of the most eye-opening breakthroughs has been in the less glamorous corners of public health.In late October a large-scale pilot rollout of the malaria vaccine RTS,S in parts of Africa by the World Health Organization was shown to have reduced child mortality in by 13 percent over four years, Science reported. It was so astonishing that mortality reduction in one disease could reshape the prospects of all childhood deaths that the epidemiologist who led the program said she…
Jan. 3, 2024 – Losing weight and eating healthier aren’t at the very top of the list of 2024 New Year’s resolutions, at least according to one survey. Saving money is, cited by 59% of more than 400 respondents. But 47% said eating healthier was a resolution, and 35% picked losing weight.Guidance for both goals is just out from U.S. News & World Report, which issued its 14th annual ranking of the best diet plans today. The Mediterranean diet, with an emphasis on overall diet quality rather than a single food group or nutrient, swept the categories. It won in the category of Best…
Throughout the weeks that Harvard spent resisting, unsuccessfully, the calls for Claudine Gay’s resignation, a common line of defense of the embattled Ivy League president was that it’s essential not to hand any kind of victory, under any circumstances, to conservative critics of higher education.For instance, a Harvard Law professor, Charles Fried, said that he might give “credence” to the evidence that Gay was a serial plagiarist “if it came from some other quarter.” But not, he averred, when it’s being put forward as “part of this extreme right-wing attack on elite institutions.”Such right-wing attacks, argued Issac Bailey, an assistant…