It’s time to add a fifty-first star to the American flag. As the capital city of the United States, Washington, DC, has historically been controlled by the federal government instead of its own residents. Article I of the Constitution grants Congress legislative authority over its seat of government. For most of the nineteenth century, DC […]
Illustration by The Daily Beast. How does one navigate a world where “alternative facts” abound, evidence and logic can be scorned, and people with immovable opinions live in political echo chambers divorced from reality? In this world, efforts to construct robust and factually supported arguments are mocked and people are far too receptive to bullshit—attempts […]
Note: The original version of this piece, as well as the one featured in our Spring 2021 magazine, stated that the MSDP’s voter suppression hotline received hundreds of thousands of calls. The hotline actually received hundreds of calls.
In the months since President Trump lost re-election, a number of Republican leaders have moved to detach themselves from Trump and Trumpism. More may follow in the coming months. But that does not mean they should be praised. Lawmakers have only started to distance themselves from Trump’s sect of the party as his danger—or at […]
Illustration by Ishita Khanna Curiosity is the lifeblood of academia. It drives us to the classroom to learn and to the laboratory to discover. At Northeastern, curiosity propels us beyond the boundaries of the lecture halls to develop skills in the real world. Rather than be content with academic knowledge alone, Northeastern students use six-month […]
Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings revived the debate between originalism and living constitutionalism. The former espouses that judges ought to interpret the literal text of the Constitution according to what the words meant when they were promulgated. The latter suggests that the Framers intentionally used loose language to allow for future interpretation, and that […]
This article discusses sexual violence in detail.
Last January, Max Willner-Giwerc, a student whom I feel lucky to count as a friend, published “On Guns and Liberty.” Willner-Giwerc’s broad argument against legal firearm ownership was well-founded, well-reasoned, and cited reputable sources. He argues that guns create a public sense of fear and deny victims of gun violence the freedom to live, while […]
The new Biden administration will have to address myriad challenges, from the COVID-19 pandemic to affordable health care to climate change. While his immediate focus is on domestic issues, Biden will eventually need to turn his attention to the Asia-Pacific, a region of geostrategic importance to Washington. The security environment has changed significantly since Biden […]
Photo by Joe Piette Objectivity doesn’t mean what most people think it does. Its original definition, popularized by Walter Lippmann, explained how neutrality applies to journalism the same way the scientific method does to science: a collection of evidence that leads to a deductive conclusion. Today, objectivity is synonymous with “fairness” and “balance.” It’s unattainable […]
