Jamaica: Trying to be Better.

Flying over Jamaica is a little bit like watching advertisements for your dream vacation.  The beauty is literally breathtaking.  Yes, there are resorts.  Yes, the water is spectacular.  And yes, the food is phenomenal.  But those are just perks.  And unfairly, those perks aren’t available to most of the population.  The beauty of Jamaica, though, […]

Buying Our Security: The Actual Risk of Terrorism

The United States is in a perpetual state of alert, forced to contend with a question that never seems to receive an answer: are we safer than we were before the fall of the Twin Towers changed everything? The effort to provide a positive response to this question comes with considerable cost. The Department of […]

GOP 2016: Looking to the Past, Present, and Future for the Republican Strategy

With the 2012 election firmly in the rear view mirror, Republicans have spent the better part of 2013 reflecting on their loss in the presidential race and rebranding the party image. Despite retaining a majority in the House of Representatives, the GOP has conceded that the landscape for a presidential election is entirely different. In […]

Conjectural Journalism: John King is a Jerk

On April 15, after the terrorists attacked the Boston Marathon, we Bostonians rushed towards the explosions to help the injured, and we rushed to hospitals to give blood. In the chaos, we rushed to the internet to find out if our friends were safe. The media responded by rushing to conclusions. After the bombings, we […]

Judith Butler’s: Precarious Life

Judith Butler’s book Precarious Life was a subject of discussion in Prof. Bormann’s Contemporary Political Thought POLS 2332 class this past semester.  This book puts human vulnerability and loss (the precariousness of life) at its center and Butler asks us, against the backdrop of 9/11, what – politically – might be made of our grief […]

Give Me Liberty: The Constitution in an Age of Terror

Benjamin Franklin has long warned Americans that “any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” His warning has been invoked throughout American history, as it has been in light of recent events. Yet it seems decidedly powerless in a country that so readily […]