Linda Huang is an associate editor for the Daily, having previously served as the executive editorial board editor. She is a senior majoring in economics and international relations with a minor in philosophy and can be reached at peixuan.huang@tufts.edu.
Oscar-winning Polish director and convicted sex offender Roman Polanski can be said to have redefined the way ‘evilness’ was depicted on screen in the 1960s through his masterpiece “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968). Unfortunately, just nine years later, he redefined the same evil himself by committing statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl.
Welcome back to my column! Thanks to the one and only movie review submission I received last semester, today I’ll be revisiting Rob Reiner’s classic, heartwarming, Valentine’s-perfect “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989) — easily one of my all-time favorite comfort rewatches.
“MEN WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND!” screamed my housemate, after we finished watching “The Substance” (2024) — the exact same reaction I had after seeing “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) for the first time last Saturday at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.
A few weeks ago, I was doomscrolling Instagram and came across a Wall Street Journal post titled “Mamdani Is Promising a Cheaper New York. But Can He Afford to Pay for It?” When I opened the comments, I was disappointed but not surprised to see that the first comment said: “media propaganda is out in full force against him,” followed by over 1200 likes.
Humans are born to think that we are capable of developing a sense of basic autonomy and agency — the abilities to govern ourselves, free from external control or influence, and to make choices for ourselves to achieve an intended goal. From an early age, we learn that our frontal lobe will develop as we age, allowing us to eventually make independent decisions for ourselves and live life as we want.
On my flight back to Boston from Hong Kong, I watched “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” (1996), a Hong Kong film directed by Peter Chan and starring Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung — the perfect ending to my summer. The bittersweet emotions this romantic melodrama evoked quickly earned it a place at the top of my list of Hong Kong classics, despite its poorly translated English title. The original Chinese name, “Tian Mi Mi,” literally means “Sweet Honey,” a far better description of the film’s tender yet heartbreaking tone.
On Sept. 19, I attended the Cross University Student Innovators Mixer at Tufts, hosted by the Derby Entrepreneurship Center, right after 2025 Startup Boston Week. While Elaine Chen, director of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center, kindly told me that I, too, am an “innovator” despite never having started a business myself, I knew I was part of the majority of Tufts students who have never seriously considered launching a startup at this stage in life. To put it bluntly: There are far fewer startups coming out of Tufts compared to many other universities, and I’m one of the reasons why there isn’t one more.
Most people who have read my viewpoints probably know by now that I am an enthusiastic opinion-haver on political and socioeconomic issues (check out my previous column “Coffee Table Socioeconomics!”). What they might not know, however, is that I’m also an avid movie-watcher and amateur reviewer. Combine these interests, and this column is born.
When I was notified by my supervisor at the Student Accessibility and Academic Resources Center — also known as the StAAR Center — at the end of my first year that I had been accepted as a writing fellow, I was overjoyed. First of all, it was the first job I had ever been offered. Second, it was the only on-campus job I had been accepted to after applying to countless random positions at the Mayer Campus Center and Tisch Library through Handshake. I had always wanted an on-campus job because it seemed so cool and rewarding. Now, two years later, I can confidently say I was right, and that my Tufts experience wouldn’t have been nearly as meaningful without it.
I’ve spent the past year being what my friends jokingly like to call a “professional hater,” writing columns where I rant about the bleak state of our world’s social and economic conditions, usually while drinking coffee, as my column name suggests. To be clear, there’s no shortage of issues worth addressing, and I can always think of more to critique. Maybe this makes me a cynic, a pessimist, a subscriber to realpolitik or all of the above. But beyond venting, I’ve come to realize that the true value lies in the process itself — the act of recognizing the significance, complexity and multidimensional nature of these problems. It has made me realize that — in a self-conceited way — the ability to critically think about social and economic issues is what’s the most important. That said, all I ask is for you to do three things.
