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Leland Culver '24

Symposium: Frozen Texas and the Welfare Question

On Feb. 13, a massive winter storm brewed in the Pacific Northwest. Two days later, it had crashed down across the Midwest and Southeast and left millions of Texans without power, freezing in their poorly insulated homes [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/freezing-cold-and-burning-mad-texas/618048/] . The very next

Symposium: The Thought-Terminating Cliché

Antifa. Antifa, antifa, antifa. There’s a phenomenon in psychology called “semantic satiation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation].” It happens when you say a word over and over again so many times that, to you, it starts to lose all meaning and becomes a series of almost nonsensical

The Symposium: To Desystematize Racism, Start With Criminal Justice

Black Lives Matter. One might see such a statement as uncontroversial. People’s lives matter. Black people are people. Therefore Black Lives Matter. It’s the simplest kind of argument you could make — a deduction following from two premises. And yet, the American justice system routinely devalues Black lives. Black

The Symposium: Please Don’t Go to Brunch

I remember the first time I ever heard the name“Donald Trump.” I was in eighth grade and it was October 2015. I came home from school to hear my mom talking about this guy who was running for president and saying all these crazy things. Neither of us knew,

The Symposium: Ranked-Choice Voting in Massachusetts and the Power of Local Activism

Last week [https://amherststudent.com/article/the-symposium-republicans-have-trashed-democratic-norms-now-what] , I considered the viability of local activism in response to a grid-locked national system. On that thread, this week I will take a look at a particular motion on the ballot in Massachusetts next week. Popularly known as “Question 2 [https://ballotpedia.org/