In The News

Quartz: Teacher in Ghana Teaches Windows on Blackboard

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu March 2, 2018
A teacher in Ghana posted photographs of himself on Facebook teaching his students about the Windows computer operating system. The students lack computers, so Richard Appiah Akoto makes detailed drawings on the chalkboard and they copy the diagrams in their notebooks. His posts went viral: “His photo was seen as both a bit of ironic fun about life in Africa but also as a source of inspiration...

Korea Herald: #MeToo Movement Rejects South Korea’s Defamation Law

Claire Lee March 1, 2018
Uncivil behavior flourishes when governments impose defamation laws that protect reputations over public declarations of truth. The global “MeToo movement underscores the problems with South Korea’s defamation law, reports Claire Lee for the Korea Herald. “Women’s activists and some lawmakers criticized the defamation law as one of the biggest challenges that sexual violence victims here face,”...

ESPN: Kid Fearless

Alyssa Roenigk February 13, 2018
Chloe Kim at age 17 won the snowboard halfpipe gold medal for the US Olympic Team. South Korea and the rest of the world, too, celebrate the story of immigrant success and a child who made her Olympic debut in her parents’ homeland. Her father came to the United States in 1982 at age 26. “With $800 and an English-Korean dictionary, Jong purchased a 1970 Nova, bought a carton of Kent cigarettes...

Project Syndicate: Jarosław Kaczyński’s Jewish Question

Sławomir Sierakowski February 7, 2018
The hardships of war induce some to display courage and others to engage in shameful behavior. A Polish law defies history to prohibit “publically and untruthfully” assigning “responsibility or co-responsibility to the Polish Nation or the Polish State for Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich (…) or for other crimes constituting crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, or war...

RAND Corporation: Truth Decay

Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich February 7, 2018
Too many in US leadership and the general public rely on feelings rather than rational analysis, facts and lessons from history, and such trends explain increasing rejection of contributions to US prosperity by education, science or globlaization. Four trends mark what Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich label as a decay in truth: disagreement over facts and data, blurred boundaries between...

The Straits Times: Aging and Immigration

Vikram Khanna February 6, 2018
Wealthy nations with low fertility rates have aging populations with decreasing numbers of working-age adults. Achieving economic growth and sustained living standards requires increasing fertility, productivity, immigration or increasing numbers of women entering the workforce, suggests Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as described by Vikram Khanna, associate...

The Japan Times: Toward a New Global Compact on Migration

Antonio Guterres January 11, 2018
More than 65 million people have been forcibly displaced from their games due to conflict or disasters. Many more people migrate in search of opportunities, and the total number of migrants approaches 250 million. “Managing migration is one of the most profound challenges for international cooperation in our time,” explains Antonio Guterres in an essay in the Japan Times. Migration confers many...