The Frivolous Arrest of Another Russian Dissident
Conferences can be a bit like summer camp: people come together for a few intense days once a year, then return to their regular lives. Last week, in Tallinn, Estonia, I attended the Lennart Meri Conference on foreign policy and security. (I go most years.) I was on a panel with Leonid Volkov, a close…
Jefferson, Adams, and the SAT’s New Adversity Factor
“There is a natural aristocracy among men,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams from Monticello, in 1813, in one of the best-known passages from their vast post-Presidential correspondence. “There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtues or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The…
“Hostile Planet”: Animals Are Struggling to Adapt, and National Geographic Is, Too
When National Geographic’s nature series “Hostile Planet” débuted, in April, I avoided it for several reasons, chief among them the word “hostile.” The series is hosted by the British adventurer and TV personality Bear Grylls, known for swashbuckling feats of survival entertainment, which made me mildly suspicious, as did National Geographic’s ownership in recent years…
How China Sees Trump and the Rapidly Escalating Trade War
Listen with: iTunes WNYC Stitcher TuneIn In May, President Donald Trump instructed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to impose a ban on foreign-made equipment, much of it from China, that might pose a security threat to the U.S. Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, characterizes the new U.S. policy as “bullying” and called it a threat to…
How the Right to Legal Abortion Changed the Arc of All Women’s Lives
I’ve never had an abortion. In this, I am like most American women. A frequently quoted statistic from a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, which reports that one in four women will have an abortion before the age of forty-five, may strike you as high, but it means that a large majority of women never need to…
“The Souvenir,” Reviewed: Joanna Hogg’s Ambitious, Frustrating Autobiographical Drama
There’s a theoretical aspect to Joanna Hogg’s urgent and ambitious autobiographical drama, “The Souvenir,” along with its dramatic one; but, far from reinforcing each other, these two aspects are in conflict—neither wins, but both are weakened. It’s set mainly in London, in the early nineteen-eighties, when Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a young filmmaker and film…
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