All of us know that texting during a class is a strategy for failure and is to be avoided unless something urgent comes up, which happens quite rarely. Or does it? For every Ukrainian student, any text message or phone call can be critical.
Who is Roger Federer? A legend in the tennis world? A humble Swiss ball boy? When asked by Joe Sabia in the “73 Questions” series for Vogue, he said he wanted to be remembered as “philanthropic” and “a good tennis player.” I am here to tell you that both descriptions are understatements of who he is, both as a tennis player and a philanthropic foundation president.
On Sept. 21, famed conservative talk show host Sean Hannity televised an exclusive interview with former President Trump. With mounting pressure on Trump and his legal team, discussion of the search warrant that found classified documents on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property was inevitable. However, an attempt by Hannity to lob softball questions at Trump and allow him to continue his talking points about the politicization of the Department of Justice quickly made for a revealing interview.
The China-Taiwan conflict has lasted for decades, from the establishment of the People's Republic of China to the present. When the PRC was established in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party’s adversary, the Kuomintang, retreated to the island of Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War. Since then, China has always claimed to hold sovereignty over Taiwan, an “inalienable” part of China.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died in police custody after having a “heart attack” and falling into a coma. She was arrested by the Iranian morality police for wearing her hijab “improperly” and violating the “dress code.” Although the police denied the allegations, witnesses have reported that Amini was beaten in the police van. Iranian authorities stated “heart attack” as the cause for her “unfortunate death;” however, her family mentioned that she had no preexisting heart condition.
To understand the end of globalization, we need to go back to its beginnings. Shockingly, our current global system is less than 80 years old, and an aberration rather than the norm.
On Sept. 16, Tufts Health Service announced that all students, faculty and staff would be required to receive both the updated (bivalent) COVID-19 booster and the annual influenza vaccine by Friday, Dec. 2. As our world oscillates between pandemic restrictions and relative normalcy, vaccine requirements remind people that coronavirus is still spreading and causing long-lasting harm; the only way to prevent more damage is to get vaccinated.
On Sept. 16, students gathered in a passionate protest against the CIA hosting a recruitment event at Tufts through the Career Center. They leveled attacks against the CIA in response to its alleged involvement in the overthrow of leftist democratically elected governments in developing countries, as well as its participation in drug trafficking. Students have a right to protest, and I would not attempt to deny or defend the CIA against such accusations. I do believe, however, that students who would like to participate in the CIA recruitment process should be allowed to do so, and that it is reasonable for Tufts to maintain a relationship with the agency.
Almost two years into his presidency, we are seeing a different Joe Biden than the one we saw on the campaign trail. For example, his recent comments on Trumpism and Taiwan reflect a boldness that has thus far been relatively absent from his presidency. Last week, President Biden issued yet another signal of this changed approach, one that impacts all Americans.
Content warning: This article mentions rape, racism and homophobia.
One of the biggest challenges in the transition to college is time management. Students find many different approaches to deal with this problem, but one tip we recommend is to avoid activities that waste your time — those that truly have no purpose and bring no joy. There are many examples that might sound familiar to Tufts students: arguing with strangers on Sidechat, refreshing Instagram for the millionth time in a day or waiting in long lines for the bathrooms on the main floor of Tisch (it’s almost always faster to use the ones downstairs). A reasonable addition to this list of activities that you are better off without would be worrying — or even thinking — about Tufts’ spot in college rankings.
In early 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Though Russia was certain of a swift victory over their neighbor, Ukraine has proved resilient over the last seven months. Reports on the war have been somewhat inconsistent, hampered by Russian authorities’ efforts to restrict the flow of information, at times explicitly targeting journalists.
Justin Hong is a junior studying American Studies.
A recent case study that signals the breakdown of the globalized system is the crisis in Sri Lanka. To those who observe from the sidelines, it seems that the crisis flared up on July 9, when demonstrators stormed the presidential palace. This sequence of events forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee to the Maldives and eventually step down from his position, handing it over to Ranil Wickremesinghe, a veteran of the political scene.
To our readers and contributors in the Tufts community,
Tathagata Dutta is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and a dissertation fellow at the Center for Humanities at Tufts for 2022–23.
To our readers,
Watching the news has been difficult this summer, from conflicts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to the horror of American politics, where a Supreme Court decision stripped the American people of their right to make choices about their own bodies. On top of these regular violations of human rights across the globe, we are also still suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic while fearing the next global health emergency: monkeypox. Data displays how far from over the COVID-19 pandemic is, especially for the United States, as the U.S. remains in the top five countries for new COVID-19 cases and deaths.
For at least the last half decade, it’s seemed like the world has been in a constant state of failure for most observers of the news. To liberals in the United States, much of this has been pinned on the unexpected and largely unprecedented rise of Donald Trump to the presidency and the devolution of much of the Republican base into cult-of-personality MAGA politics.
To the newest members of our community,
