In The News

Beijing Olympics: Shadow Over a Coming-Out Party

Paul Mooney February 20, 2008
China pursued its bid for the 2008 Olympics to burnish its image as a rising world power, also framing the games as an opportunity to improve human rights and integrate with the rest of the world. The approach of the Summer Games, however, has instead served to showcase China’s poor record on human rights. China has launched a new crackdown on domestic activists in an effort to prevent...

One Thousand Writers, One Flat World

Nayantara Sahgal February 18, 2008
Writers and readers celebrate diversity of voices, settings and stories – and yet that diversity is under attack by two competing sources, explained novelist Nayantara Sahgal in an opinion essay for Outlook India. One is a world of consumer marketing that aims to convince people that there is a best way to look, think or act and the other is religious extremism. “It is the outsider who crosses...

My Saudi Valentine

Rajaa Alsanea February 14, 2008
Love is universal, but methods for finding it differ from culture to culture. Today, most Saudi relationships begin with the help of internet networking sites, cell phones or servants who act as intermediaries. In a society that strictly prohibits contact between the opposite sexes, let alone open displays of affection, starting any relationship relies on immense trust and some amount of daring....

Danish Newspapers Reprint Mohammed Cartoon

Rosalind Ryan February 13, 2008
In 2005, the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark published a set of cartoons, including one of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. The cartoons sparked protests and renunciation throughout the Muslim world, while the West defends the right to free speech, no topics off limit. The crisis continues to show how the intentions of any one group often produce the opposite effect...

Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad

Tamar Lewin February 11, 2008
International programs and students have long lent universities more diversity and cachet, while serving as informal diplomatic agents among nations. Finding and training the best talent can lead to innovative research, patents, economic growth and eventually alumni donations. University administrators in the US now discover that they are the experts in this exporting higher education and that...

Sharia Law in UK Is “Unavoidable”

February 8, 2008
Host nations often welcome new immigrants and attempt to accommodate cultural differences in many ways. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams takes that one step further: He suggests that some Muslims in the UK do not relate to the British legal system and adds that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law, for example on marital or financial matters, may “help maintain social cohesion,” reports...

Three Young Men Try Waterboarding and Tell the Tale

Yochi J. Dreazen February 5, 2008
Debate by US government officials over specific techniques of torture has stirred youthful curiosity. One technique in particular is under scrutiny: forcibly holding an interview subject in place and bringing him or her close to drowning, otherwise known as waterboarding. Policymakers and researchers debate whether the technique is simply inhumane or, when used on terrorist suspects, could...