When the Justice Department announced last week that it was lining up behind a lawsuit against Harvard University over its consideration of race in student admissions, David Hawkins, who’s worked on the issue for nearly two decades, says there was a near-universal reaction among higher-ed admissions officials: Here we go again. “They feel pretty beaten-down,” says Hawkins, executive director for education content at the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC), which represents college admissions officers. Despite a decisive Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action just 13 months ago — and federal litigation stretching back to 1977 — “it just keeps reappearing,” Hawkins says. The déjà vu is understandable: The same…

Donald Trump has repeatedly said, “It’s easy to win a trade war.” But what he doesn’t realize is that no one ever wins a trade war, and consumers on both sides always lose. In the world of international trade, tariffs are usually met with more tariffs. And now, Harley-Davidson – a motorcycle brand that has often aligned itself with the very image of “Americaness” –  is a perfect example. In March 2018, the Trump administration announced the European Union, Canada, and Mexico, will face 25% tariffs on steel and 10% on aluminum imported by the United States. To counter the tariffs, the EU announced it will raise its tariffs on U.S. motorcycles from 6% to…

It doesn’t take a viewing of “Revenge of the Nerds” to know that bullying is so common in schools that Hollywood flicks about tweens and teens frequently feature characters that are being harassed. From being called names because of their skin color to being made fun of due to their race, ethnicity, weight, sexual orientation, or religion, kids who are different from their peers often end up being bullied at school. As we sometimes see in both movies and real life, beyond holding a one-off assembly condemning verbal and physical abuse, teachers and other staff members don’t always do enough to stop the behavior. And sometimes, as we saw this…

In the event of most major celebrity deaths, I often find myself on the periphery of the cultural moment. These days, I have a healthy interest in pop culture. As in, I follow all the Kardashians on Snapchat. I know who Grimes is. I can mumble along to most Beyoncé songs. But growing up, in a strict Arab-American home, I lived in a silo of sorts. We didn’t get cable until I was in high school; the only radio in our home was in my parents’ room. Most of what I gleaned from pop culture of the time came from schoolyard discussion or pilfered copies of Teen Beat magazine. When I got unfettered…

Oh, did you hear? Former ace pitcher and current ESPN analyst Curt Schilling finally got fired yesterday for an anti-trans meme that went up on his Facebook page. And we say “finally” because the network has seemed to look the other way with Schilling for years now, despite the fact that he can’t stop putting his corporeal foot as well as his digital one in his mouth—a trend of personal idiocy intersecting with institutional cowardice that has become commonplace at the media giant specifically, and in professional sports generally. The firing offense from Schilling involved a meme photo meant to mock outrage against North Carolina’s new “bathroom law”—the one that…

Nobody would question that the adoption of the Paris Agreement was an incredible feat of diplomacy. Getting 195 countries to agree on a 31-page pact that essentially demands a global, economy-wide transition from fossil fuels is absolutely an unprecedented political success. But as Adam Frank notes in a commentary on NPR about the Agreement, “Politics and science are two very different beasts.” Frank is himself a scientist, and though he writes with cautious optimism about the world uniting for climate action, he frets over the many, many warnings that his colleagues in the scientific community have issued about the inadequacies of the Paris Agreement. One of the loudest critics of the deal…

For years, a One Direction conspiracy theory has divided the notoriously fervent fandom into two camps: believers and nonbelievers. On Tumblr blogs and Twitter accounts, a rabid portion of the fan base is invested in perpetuating the rumor that singer Harry Styles and ex-bandmate Louis Tomlinson are dating and they’re both involved in an elaborate ruse to conceal the affair from the public. Fans do everything in their power to prove this theory, even photoshopping pictures of Tomlinson’s infant child to attempt to demonstrate that it’s not his. It’s this level of community-based crowdsourced sleuthing that inspired Grace and the Fever, a young adult novel by Zan Romanoff that has…

Even if you don’t remember ever seeing a Gillette razor commercial, you’ve almost certainly heard or seen their iconic catchphrase, “The best a man can get.” The company flipped the script in a new advertisement that addresses the #MeToo movement and the role toxic masculinity plays in it, asking, “Is this the best a man can get?” The nearly two-minute digital ad opens with a montage of news reports on bullying, #MeToo and toxic masculinity as the reversed question is asked by a narrator over images of men self-reflecting while staring into their bathroom mirrors. “It’s been going on far too long,” the narrator continues. “We can’t laugh it off.”…

When white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, last month at the Unite the Right rally, counterprotesters showed up to beat back their message of hate and intimidation with a showing of unity. Now, Charlottesville resident, Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long and his wife Megan are fighting back against bigotry in their community by making a positive contribution to the city’s youth. “In August, we watched people fill our hometown streets with hatred and bigotry,” ​Long said in a statement. “Megan and I decided to try to combat those actions with our own positive investment in our community.” Long is donating his earnings from six games this…

Oakland A’s pitcher Sean Doolittle knows the downside of taking on political issues as a professional athlete. A year and a half after hosting a Thanksgiving welcoming dinner in Chicago for Syrian refugees with his girlfriend, Eireann Dolan, he is still fielding insults and slurs for welcoming refugees to America. But he’s not dissuaded.  Following the recently overturned immigration bans levied against seven predominately Muslim countries, Doolittle has continued to speak up. He recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the perception that immigrants pose a threat and the benefit of welcoming others to the United States.  He elaborated on the circumstances under which refugees seek aid and their hopes for their new lives.…