Opinion
The “Top Dawg” Effect: What Kendrick Lamar Tells Us About the Future of Urban Revitalization
American inner-cities are marginalized and troubled, yet deeply creative and vibrant. Kendrick Lamar and Top Dawg Entertainment have capitalized on Los Angeles’ cultural vitality and are transforming their communities in the process.
Scholastique Mukasonga and Life in Rwanda
Mukasonga makes no profound declarations about the impacts of conflict or sweeping statements about the loss of tradition or lifestyle. Rather, she shows us these phenomena through speaking to the subtle erosion of positions in carefully curated systems and how the properties of these systems begin to diminish as circumstance alters livelihoods.
All Hail the Heartland
In the political imagination, the Midwest is where doors are never locked, politeness is practically a commandment, and virtue runs as clear as the rivers.
Answering Generations of Silence
Life and art’s cyclical relation means that what we show and how we show it matters.
Xi Jinping: The Man Behind China’s Modern Rise—and Potentially Its Future Fall
Xi’s thirst for even more centralized power…not only risks alienating China from the international community, but also feeds growing dissatisfaction within government and Chinese Communist Party ranks. Soon, Xi might find himself fighting a war on two fronts.
Reproductive Justice Means More than Abortion
While all child-bearing people have faced reproductive oppression, BIPOC have had to fight harder to have children, to raise their children safely, and at the most basic level, to be heard.
Cancel Our Culture: Compassion in an Age of Reckoning
Do not simply fall into cancel culture, rather, cancel our culture. Change it and shape it for the better as you are working to move humanity ever forward toward the golden ideals of utopia, but do it with heart and compassion in the eye of justice.
Flying Solo?: Balancing Nationalism with Collaboration in Space Diplomacy
Despite what the scientific community and other onlookers may want, there is huge diplomatic capital and prestige to be gained from being the first country to put humans on Mars, such that political factors would probably limit cooperation for the first crewed Mars mission.