Lewis Coser, who died July 8 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was one of the last of an intellectual generation. This is true in the literal sense that he, along with Irving Howe, Stanley Plastrik, and a small nucleus of others, invented …
For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, we are engaged in a serious debate about the shape and character of global politics. What produced the debate was, first of all, the growing arrogance and recklessness of …
The Hope for a Common European Foreign Policy
This past winter, as the debate over invading Iraq intensified, I received an e-mail announcement for an “anti-war” production of Shakespeare’s Henry V being staged in Los Angeles. For people who know the play only from Laurence Olivier’s Anglo-patriotic, World-War-II-era …
Participants with birthdays between the months of July and September were told to congregate at a bar and grill off Broadway in Midtown, a few minutes before 7 p.m. and to await further instructions. When I arrived, the bar was …
States, Rights and Justice
In the mid-twentieth century, antibiotics and modern medicine seemed to be eliminating the threat of infectious diseases. But since the 1980s and the emergence of HIV/AIDS and the subsequent appearances of Ebola, Hanta Fever, West Nile Virus, Lime Disease, SARS, …
Echoes from Ground Zero
The past thirty years have witnessed a dramatic change in the way Western democracies deal with ethnic minorities. In the past, ethnic diversity was often seen as a threat to political stability, and minorities were subject to a range of …
Rebuilding Meaning After 9/11
The New Global Politics
Since the events of September 11, 2001, many in India have argued that if the United States can justify its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of combating terrorism, destroying weapons of mass destruction, and changing regimes, then …
If not for the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Barbershop might have been merely one of the most popular black films in American history. Written, directed, and produced by blacks, this tale of a day in the life of …
The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America’s Rule of Law by Walter K. Olson St. Martin’s Press, 2002, 352 pp., $25.95 Democracy by Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government by Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod …
U.S. Military Might and Myths
