Among those entering college for the first time, 45% of those going to 2-year institutions and 28% of those attending 4-year institutions do not return the next year. While transfers are abundant, and many students return to college later on, far too many students are failing to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to them because they are not college-ready.
The European Union must develop a 10-year plan for Ukraine. This plan will also define what Europe itself will be a decade hence. In tribute to Europe’s pivotal politician, who has clearly led Europe’s evolving policy towards Ukraine, we might call it the Merkel plan.
We are pleased to share our recently published article on law and autonomous weapons, on which we teamed up with our good friend Daniel Reisner (formerly head of the Israel Defense Forces International Law Department). The article, “Adapting the Law of Armed Conflict to Autonomous Weapon Systems,” appears as 90 International Law Studies 386 (2014), available online at SSRN (free pdf download).
Tomorrow, it’s back to California. So let’s spend our last day in South Carolina with a brief look at the state’s governor, Nikki Haley, who’s up for re-election this fall.
The Japanese did not see their attack on Pearl Harbor as foolish at all. What in retrospect seems suicidal did not necessarily seem so at the time. In hindsight, the wiser Japanese course would have been to absorb the orphaned colonial Far Eastern possessions of France, the Netherlands and Great Britain that were largely defenseless after June 1941.
Earlier this week, I posted a 1983 memo that I wrote to my boss at the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, about a meeting to discuss relaxing the limits on exports of Alaskan oil. Below is a follow-up memo on the same issue, written a few months later to Bill Niskanen at the Council. Everything in square brackets is added by me now to explain things that otherwise might not be clear.
The William F. Buckley Program at Yale University lately showed bravery unusual for an academic institution. It has refused to be bullied by the Muslim Students Association and its demand that the Buckley Program rescind an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak on campus September 15.
Muslims in the Middle East are fighting wars of religion. Like the carnage between Protestants and Catholics that haunted Northern Ireland during the last third of the 20th century, there is little anyone can do until local peoples crave peace so intensely they are willing to cultivate it.
Call them what you will: the cream of the crop, the best and brightest, the intellectual elite. But it’s official; the college-educated third of Americans are society’s new upper crust. Research has shown that skilled workers who are also degree holders tend to pump the most money into their local economies over time.
If you have a serious interest in Asia or in foreign policy in general – whether you’re a policy wonk, an academic, or just a good citizen – I have a suggestion for you. Send an email to all of those to whom you owe service, such as employers and children, and ask for a three-day leave.
The tide of global democratic change, which at the start of the new millennium looked like an unstoppable force of nature, has been turned back over the last decade. How serious and prolonged this reversal turns out to be is open to question.
