By Rowan McGarry-Williams (PO’ 21) For many Americans, the relationship between home and school seems simple enough: they live in a neighborhood and they go to their neighborhood’s public school. But this simplicity belies an entire, constructed network of policy decisions. For example: how does one define a neighborhood, or a school zone? Why do neighborhoods look the way they do? How did...
By Andy Liu (HMC ’23) During the ongoing 2020 Democratic primaries, many candidates have proposed varying levels of tuition-free public college, ranging from moderate proposals involving free community college, some level of student loan forgiveness, or the complete elimination of tuition and fees at all public colleges. Yet, while these plans have come under fire from conservative commentators...
By Izzy Davis (PO ’22) Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who infamously leaked classified information about the NSA’s illegal spying tactics in 2013, outlined the utilitarian perspective in regards to government surveillance: “We’d do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn’t defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have...
Conducted by Rafael Santa Maria (PO ’20) It may come as a surprise to advocates and allies of the LGBTQ+ community that this question has not been resolved yet. Despite the considerable progress made in the continuing battle for equality over the last few decades, it seems hard to believe that sexual orientation remains unrecognized as a protected class at the federal level. As an unprotected...
By Andy Liu (HMC ’23) This June, the tech community was taken by storm when Facebook announced it would be launching Libra, a new cryptocurrency in 2020. In the four months since, the proposed currency has faced staunch opposition from both politicians and power players in the tech industry, such as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. This threatens to delay Libra indefinitely, something that could...
By Aden Siebel (PO ’21) With an increasingly complex field of technological privacy and ethics concerns, government regulation of tech giants has made surprising progress. International lawmakers have implemented significant policy and punished these companies, and while the U.S. federal system has been slower, Congress has increasingly threatened executives and called for industry reform...
Rowan McGarry-Williams (PO ’21) The integration of American public schools, once at the center of education reform, today tends to be overshadowed by debates over charter schools, accountability, and funding. Despite extensive research on the widespread benefits of integration, our schools are more racially and economically segregated now than they have been in decades, with grave...
Elias Van Emmerick (PO ’21) Wealth and income inequality have been oft-cited issues in the runup to the 2020 Presidential election. The United States consistently ranks near the top of all developed countries in both metrics, and inequality has generally trended upwards for multiple decades. Amongst news of historically low unemployment and all-time highs in the stock market, the U.S...
By Andy Liu (HMC ’23) The European Union has a reputation for stringent data rights regulations, with the 2018 passing of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) further strengthening personal data rights and data protection across member states. However, a recent ruling in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a case between Google and CNIL, a French privacy regulator, relaxed...
By Izzy Davis (PO ’22) In its burgeoning state, YouTube was characterized as the “wild-west” of online video, known for everything from anthropomorphized oranges to viral videos of people eating spoonfuls of cinnamon, with no shortage of controversial content. While a romanticized view of the democratic free-for-all that was once YouTube, the stark difference between the site in its infancy...
