Jacob Wang (PO ‘21) Singapore has been lauded as the paragon of a multi-racial society where meritocracy prevails and different ethnic groups live in harmony. The three main ethnicities are Chinese, Malay, and Indian, which together account for 74%, 13%, and 9% of the population respectively. However, not all were content as Singapore welcomed its first female president, Halimah Yacob, in...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) Relations between the United States and Cuba have been stony since the Cold War, with the Cuban Missile Crisis standing as one of the notorious examples of nuclear escalation. The past decade especially has contained dramatic turning points in the diplomacy between the two countries, a diplomacy that is slowly breaking down due to moves from the Trump administration. To...
Allie Carter (CMC ’19) Saudi Arabia, characterized by its conservative religious and national values, has made the monumental decision to grant women the right to drive. This deep-rooted policy has been representative of the systemic repression of women in Saudi Arabia. The decision to permit women to drive not only has major social implications but will also transform the country’s...
By Kaela Cote-Stemmermann (SCR ‘18) China is currently in the middle of reforming its healthcare system, a decision that will affect over 1.3 billion people for years to come. Moving from historically state-sponsored care to market-oriented care and now to a combination of the two, China has struggled to find a structure that works for its diverse population. Public health problems carry...
By Aarti Aggarwal (Jindal Global Law School ’18, India) In one of the most notorious cases of corporate tax avoidance of recent times, the European Commission has ordered Ireland to recover EUR 13 billion in back taxes plus interest from Apple, after ruling that a special tax arrangement for Apple to route profits through Ireland was illegal state aid.[1] This landmark decision has...
Kaela Cote-Stemmermann (SCR’ 18) David H. Rank, the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Beijing, announced his resignation on June 5, 2017. He cited his opposition to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement as reasoning for his resignation. The Paris agreement, otherwise known as the Paris Climate Accord, is an agreement between 195 countries to curb...
By Maïmouna Diarra (PO ’19) and Gabe Magee (PO ’20) Mr. Cameron Phelps Munter was the former U.S. ambassador to Serbia (2007-2009) and Pakistan (2010-2012), serving as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in some of the most conflict-ridden regions of the world for almost thirty years. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Munter taught European history at the University of California Los Angeles...
By Shayok Chakraborty (PO ‘19) “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny…At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” These were the immortal words of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, as he addressed his first Parliament on the night of India’s independence from the British Empire. It was a night...
Phoebe Alpern (PO ‘20) Against the grim track record of ethnic cleansing, sectarian violence, and unmitigated genocide that defined United Nations interventions of the 1980s and 90s, the UN mission in East Timor was a debatable success: a rapid mobilization that spawned a transparent democratic referendum, restored thousands of refugees to their homes, and embraced the promise of self...
James Dail CM ’20 – The two international developments in the twenty-first century that have defined relations between former Eastern bloc countries are growing Russian belligerence and the dawn of US isolationism. The Russian invasion of Crimea, and its covert involvement in the Ukrainian civil war, have the former Eastern bloc countries worried about their own security. Complicating...
