Guest Thinkers

Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron announces today that deep cuts in public expenditure “will change British life”. They will in short be the most drastic public spending cuts in a […]

“Is a world with people in it better than one without?” asks Peter Singer of Princeton. How do we justify brining new human life into the world amidst so much suffering and unprecedented crises?

The Guardian contests the stereotype that Americans are ignorant of history but, the English paper believes, contemporary conservative movements do appropriate the past for political gain.

European soccer scouts look to Africa for budding talent because players there “are young, technically adept, athletic — and cheap.” Is this a modern day slave trade?

The bipolar extremes of American politics—red states, blue states; with us or against us; cut and run or victory; capitalism or socialism—have now divided Islam into two separate categories. There […]

Rob Reynolds recalls the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, how business leaders were more coarse at that time, and how reaction to the spill fed a fledgling American environmental movement.

The New York Review of Books continues to host the dialog between Peter Beinart and Abraham Foxman over how much support Irsael is receiving from a new generation of American Jews.

Oil leaking from a British Petroleum pipe under the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico has reached land slicking wildlife habitats on the Southern U.S. coast, as well as […]

As a shock jock radio DJ, Glenn Beck called his rival’s wife to make fun of her recent miscarriage on the air. It’s that humanistic spirit that suffuses Beck’s broadcasting […]

“Equal opportunity is essential but not enough,” said LBJ forty five years ago to inaugurate an era of affirmative action. His words ring true today when the income gap is widening.

We all live with the newness of technology and the oldness of our social customs, so what happens when death unites the two? What happens to your online self when you die?

Is evil still a relevant concept in our increasingly secular times or is it too mystical to be discussed rationally? What are the different forms of evil and how do we combat them?

God bless whistleblowers. Graham Rayman and the Village Voice obtained hundreds of hours of covertly recorded audio from one disgruntled Bed-Stuy cop: Two years ago, a police officer in a […]

In the Matrix trilogy, God is portrayed as a software Architect. The fact that the first movie was released in 1999 is appropriate since software code had begun to exert […]

What happens when an artist loses his or her creative currency – the capacity for self-expression? That’s exactly what happened to legendary Los Angeles graffiti artist Tony Quan, a.k.a. Tempt […]

Charlie Riedel of the Associated Press deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his photos of the oil-slicked pelicans of the Louisiana coast. It would be an unconventional choice. Human subjects have […]

The defining image of the BP oil spill is a suspiciously low resolution video feed from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The much maligned Huffington Post seems to […]

We live in an intriguing era of self-disclosure.  Tonight, in New York City, the World Science Festival features a panel discussion called Strangers in the Mirror: “What’s it like to […]

“Intuition can help us make good decisions without expending the time and effort needed to calculate the optimal decision, but shortcuts sometimes lead to dead ends,” says The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Corruption slang can sound cute in foreign tongues. Euphemisms may belittle cross-border bribes but they are still illegal, warn James G. Tillen and Sonia M. Delmans.

What should happen to the former Stasi HQ? How much of a glimpse into history, and whose interpretation of it, should it offer?

Mass shootings are mercifully rare in Britain. “Gunman goes on killing spree” is a newspaper headline that one might expect to read every ten years or so. But none of […]

As advice columnists go, Emiy Yoffe of “Dear Prudence” is usually relatively compassionate. Today, however, Prudie was shockingly cruel to a young woman* grieving the loss of her best friend: […]

The New Yorker looks at how American intellectuals are reacting to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan, two authors born into Islam who now support the liberal-democratic project.

Garrison Keillor is feeling especially powerless these days: “As the Gulf turns dark and the polar ice cap melts, I intend to listen to Bach more and listen to the news less,” he says.

You have the right remain silent. But now, according to a new Supreme Court decision, if you want to exercise your right to remain silent, you’re going to have to […]

Over the past decade, Creative Commons has been the most important link between creativity and copyright law, championing a new breed of licenses that use the law to propel, rather […]

Early Monday morning Israeli commandos rappelled from helicopters onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship bearing tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza. There were about 700 passengers […]

There have been repeated attempts by activists to deliver desperately needed supplies to Gaza since the Israeli blockade, ably assisted by Egypt, turned this narrow strip of land – one […]

In the wake of the deadly flotilla boarding involving Israeli troops and resulting in multiple deaths, outrage has been expressed around the world. One of the strongest cries of outrage […]