By Alan Silverman on June 21, 2009
Beneficence… is less essential to the existence of society than justice…. [M]ercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.—Adam Smith
It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.—Thomas Paine
The modern debate over the death penalty in America seems to be a contest less of [...]
Posted in Editorials, Essay | Tagged November 2002, Volume I Number I
By Sheila Dugan on March 1, 2005
After November 2nd, the Republican Party magically transformed itself from a group of white men smoking cigars at the country club to a mess of slack-jawed yokels with their eyes cast towards the sky looking for signs of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Analyses of the 2004 election made much of the fact that [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged March 2005, Volume III Number I
By Sheila Dugan on March 1, 2005
In an op-ed to the New York Times, William Broyles Jr. writes of allowing “other people’s children” to fight our wars. Noting the scarcity of politicians’ family members fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, Broyles ends his column by advocating the return of the draft; only then “chance, not connection or clever manipulation, would determine who [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged March 2005, Volume III Number I
By Stephen Beale on March 1, 2005
Almost one year has elapsed since its disastrous debut, yet the mission of Brown University’s committee on slavery and justice remains unclear. Is the controversial committee a good-faith attempt to instruct the campus community in the virtues of disinterested dialogue, as university officials insist, or is Brown flirting with yet another intellectual fad, as many [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged March 2005, Volume III Number I
By Pratik Chougule on March 1, 2005
No community can be built on the basis of preferential treatment and double standards, and their existence belies university rhetoric about equality.
-Dinesh D’Souza
In the name of diversity, multiculturalism, and political correctness, Brown University has deliberately broken with the ideals of a classical liberal education. Perhaps this academic revolution can be most plainly witnessed in the [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged March 2005, Volume III Number I
By Travis Rowley on March 1, 2005
One of my early encounters with liberalism at Brown University wasn’t even on campus. I met a girl while I was at a bar called the Yellow Kitten on Block Island, a small old-style colonial island off the coast of Narragansett, Rhode Island, my hometown. The area is a popular tourist spot in the summer, [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged March 2005, Volume III Number I
By Sheila Dugan on April 5, 2004
Next to photocopied pictures of Billy Collins and his poems, my high school poetry teacher stapled an op-ed written in response to Sam Hamill’s decision to not attend Laura Bush’s symposium about poetry. It was supposed to make us, students at a public arts high school, think about the artist’s role in political dialogue: should [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged April 2004, Volume II Number V
By Alan Silverman on April 5, 2004
Having attended Brown University for nearly two years, and having sampled the political discourse here for just as long, I have learned a great deal about the power of labels. In the last four months, I have also learned how easily labels can mislead. For most of my time at Brown, I thought of myself [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged April 2004, Volume II Number V
By Eric Neuman on November 10, 2003
Marriage is like a pair of shears oft times working in opposite directions, but punishing anyone that comes between them.
—Sydney Smith
The idea of contracts is deeply embedded in Western history and culture. Contracts reflected the Enlightenment ideal of reconciling individual autonomy with social obligations. In 1651, Thomas Hobbes introduced the governing principle of the social [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged November 2003, Volume II Number III
By Alan Silverman on November 10, 2003
But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.
William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene II
Often, when I discuss next year’s presidential election with my conservative friends, they seem assured that 2004 will [...]
Posted in Essay | Tagged November 2003, Volume II Number III
