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Opinion

The Need for Young Voices

It’s only been a few short weeks since 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg landed in New York City after spending weeks at sea, traveling carbon-free from her native Sweden to the U.S. for this fall’s United Nations climate talks. Her welcome in the city’s North

Seeing Double: Stop Trying to Copy Scandinavia

Seeing Double: Stop Trying to Copy Scandinavia

As a dual citizen of Denmark and the U.S., few things make me happier than seeing American politicians praising Scandinavia. Figures like Bernie Sanders have held up the Nordic economic system as a model for socialist progress in America and the world. “I think we should look to Denmark

Pondering a Plethora of Pugnacious Proboscidea

Pondering a Plethora of Pugnacious Proboscidea

I was never taken with the whole mammoth movement. The idea that the perfect Amherst College sports mascot would be a creature renowned for being slow, dim and dead… Well, what can I say? Things got even stranger when the college hired a design firm that produced the currently ubiquitous

“My Door is Always Open”

“My door is always open,” writes sociologist Anthony Abraham Jack ’07 in his new book “The Privileged Poor.” That familiar refrain is an invitation for students to connect with faculty and staff to receive assistance and support. Indeed, as Jack and other researchers have emphasized, connection is important not only

Our Fidelities and Obligations Under the Trump Administration

Our Fidelities and Obligations Under the Trump Administration

Over the past few years, as the nation has confronted a cruel and irrational president, I have been most dismayed not by the president himself, but by the public servants who have willfully taken active roles in supporting his agenda. I have asked why officials with top educations would lend

What Makes a Vote Count?

What Makes a Vote Count?

The day we elect our next president is over 13 months away. My inner procrastinator finds it ridiculous that I’m giving any ounce of thought to something that distant. (Really? You’re leaving your summer reading for Sept. 2, but this gets 400+ days worth of forethought?) Maybe it’

Seeing Double: An Introduction

Over 1.7 millions books have been published so far this year. 8,607 tweets are posted every second. And 75 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube in the 15 seconds it took you to read this paragraph. Most of those gigabytes of information will never cross our minds,