The Big Dreary
I must be stuck in some dark-humoured comedy sketch. Everywhere I go in Kyiv, the same exact conversation follows me (well, perhaps I’m fudging a little, one conversation I overheard involved two...
Finkelstein-ed Academia and the Truth about Palestine
The long bitter saga of DePaul University’s scandalous decision to deny tenure to one of its most prolific and internationally renowned public intellectuals, Professor Norman Finkelstein, is...
Conspiracy Theory
I’ve forgotten the ending. It’s one of the things they took in those long days of dull yellow light – a way to pinch out the flame and watch the smoke rise against the window at night. I woke...
Only. Skin. Deep.
A few years ago, I boarded a plane heading to a small American college-town. It was my first time in the United States, and I was starting my freshman year at a prominent institution of higher...
An Inconvenient Princess
There is a strange truism at work in modern society: people who are capable of instigating real change, those who possess intellect and charisma as well as the circumstantial power to influence and...
Jon’s Story – a Brother’s Forgiveness
“Miss, I don’t believe in God, but can I talk with you for a minute?” He held his red bandana in his hand with a sense of awe and reverence not typically observed in our simple, one-room...
Resisting Expectations: An American in Accra
I can’t count the number of times I was asked the question, usually from locals whom I had met only moments earlier: “So, is it what you expected? Is Africa what you thought it would be like?”...
The Demise of Logic, Sanity, and Innocence
Logic as a science has its roots in the early history of some founding types of societies such as India, China and Greece, but there really wasn't that much to be logical about in those early times....
Rudy Giuliani: Just How Far Will His Dance Take Him?
On August 9th of 1997, a young Haitian immigrant by the name of Abner Louima in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn was brought to a police station after being arrested for his role in a brawl at a...
The Sweetest Thing
As millions of other people in this sick, sad world of ours, I follow in the footsteps of Winston Churchill. Am I a charismatic leader who overcame the Nazis and a lisp? Am I a defiant showstopper...