Early on in the French Revolution, in his memoir on press
freedom submitted to the Estates-General in June 1789, Jean-Pierre
Brissot (1754–93), later a prominent revolutionary leader,
proclaimed liberty of the press “un droit naturel à
l’homme.”...
On the eve of South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994,
few observers thought that the day would pass without bloodshed. A
smooth transition toward democracy seemed very unlikely. Having
been in a state of emergency from 1985 to 1990, the...
Historians have debated for centuries the magnitude, nature, and
impact of population movements from the borders of the Roman Empire
into its heart between the fourth and seventh centuries. In recent
years, geneticists have begun to attempt to...
When the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel (colloquially known as the “Economics
Nobel”) was awarded to Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller, along with
Lars Peter Hansen, many were puzzled by the selection. Fama...
Ellsworth Kelly is one of the very first artists whose work I
liked. Perhaps he was second, just after Piet Mondrian. One of the
things I asked Kelly after we finally met and became friends, close
to a quarter of a century ago, was why he had not...
In 1935, Albert Einstein and collaborators wrote two papers at
the Institute for Advanced Study. One was on quantum mechanics [1]
and the other was on black holes [2]. The paper on quantum
mechanics is very famous and influential. It pointed out a...
Young children often pose the most interesting questions. “Why
are we here?” is one of them. And this question can take on many
forms. One of them is “Why is there anything at all?” Another is
“Why am I alive?” or “Why am I me?”
College campuses struggle with how to think and talk about
diversity of all kinds, a struggle that has gone on for more than
two decades now. Every year, there are stories from around the
country about anonymous hate speech and offensive theme...
