from
My favorite course in law school wasn't with a typical law professor. Food and Drug Law was taught by the former General Counsel of the FDA. He had a volcanic temper that we assumed was the byproduct of years of dealing with bureaucrats. In class, he abided neither tardiness nor squeamishness; the first topic was food sanitation and its flip...
Read
My 6-year-old son Zev is obsessed with Russia. Not because of the interference in our recent Presidential election, but simply because it looms so large on the world map that hangs in his bedroom. His kindergarten teacher tells us he won't stop talking about Russia, and his favorite YouTube video is...
Read
Last Monday an organization we hold in high regard, the New America Foundation, posted a piece comparing Republicans who defend for-profit colleges to climate change deniers.
Read
I love community colleges. My mother spent her career as a faculty member at Toronto's George Brown College where she taught sociology and courses to nursing students on dealing with death and dying, which led to many grim but memorable conversations around the house. But we all recognized that community college paid for our hockey skates and microwave...
Read
Two weeks ago, President-elect Trump named his selection as Ambassador to Israel: David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island who has done legal work for Trump for the past 15 years. David Friedman's qualifications arise primarily from his support for Israeli settlers in the West Bank, which...
Read
In her new book, The Nine Of Us: Growing Up Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving sibling of John, Robert and Teddy Kennedy, tells a great story. One day Jean stole a cookie and her mother Rose locked her in a closet as a consequence. Jean recalls being in the closet for an abnormally long...
Read
Some of my fondest college memories are of debates held by the Progressive Party of the Yale Political Union. Ostensibly a debate about a topic ("Social Change Demands Violence," "One Person Can Change The World"), it didn't really matter what the topic was. It was essentially arguing for the sake of learning to argue. One time we debated...
Read
As a Canadian, I've always been jealous of America and its super-cool cast of founding fathers - a unique constellation of political geniuses who inspire patriotism, gratitude, devotion, and now groundbreaking Broadway rap musicals. It's hard to imagine a musical about Canada's founding father.
Read
I've never understood why some people insist on keeping their ideas secret. I always assume if I have an idea, dozens of others have had the same one. It's not ideas that determine success, it's execution. Which is why, from the beginning, I've always been happy to freely share my many amazing...
Read
Every time I read an article about campus dining, I think about this segment of the old Yale promo video. In fact, this quarter-century-old loopy video has proven to be a prism through which my former roommates and I view college...
Read