The US Government’s Role in Regulating Social Media Disinformation
This article was written prior to Elon Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter. In a 2020 report, the Department of Homeland Security named White supremacists as the single greatest domestic terror threat facing the US. In 2021, QAnon supporters, the Proud Boys, and other extremist groups carried out a direct attack on democracy in plain sight. […]
Reimagining the University to Focus on Education
Something is wrong with our university system. Many young Americans decide against enrolling in or even applying to universities and community colleges. College enrollment has declined every year for the past decade, and there are one million fewer students in college today than there were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Credentialism and the college experience don’t […]
Off-Campus Censorship: Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age
“Fuck school. Fuck softball. Fuck cheerleading. Fuck everything.” This is what high school freshman B. L. captioned a Snapchat after discovering that she did not make the varsity cheerleading team. In the photo, B. L. and a friend were in a convenience store sticking out their tongues and raising their middle fingers. The self-deleting Snap […]
Episode 12: “COVID-19 & College Campuses” with Jake Egelberg
Listen and subscribe to our podcast: Via Spotify | Via Apple Podcasts Jake Egelberg joins Max & Bryan to explain why he thinks colleges were right to reopen and stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jake, a Biochemistry major, also explains how COVID-19 vaccines work and why you should get one. Jake also joins Ariana for “Class Struggle.” […]
Abandon Ship: How SAIL Threatens Intrinsic Curiosity
Illustration by Ishita Khanna Curiosity is the lifeblood of academia. It drives us to the classroom to learn and to the laboratory to discover. At Northeastern, curiosity propels us beyond the boundaries of the lecture halls to develop skills in the real world. Rather than be content with academic knowledge alone, Northeastern students use six-month […]
Coming of Age in the Age of Trump
As Donald Trump leaves office, those of us who learned politics during his administration must reckon with what he’s taught us.
Bust or Bust: The Future of Boston’s Christopher Columbus Statue
Who deserves to be a statue? Recently, activists around the world have answered this question with “not a murderer”—a statue of slave owner Edward Colston was thrown into a river in Bristol, UK; a confederate statue was hung in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Boston’s very own Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded. Columbus’s statue was until […]
The Myth of Equal Opportunity
My parents peddled three myths to me as a child: the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and American meritocracy. The “American Dream,” our national ethos of opportunity and success based on hard work, has been a mainstay of many immigrant parents, including mine, who come to the U.S. seeking a better life for themselves and their […]
Spread the Word to End the Word
Every year on the first Wednesday in March, thousands of people across the country take part in “Spread the Word to End the Word,” a national campaign to raise awareness about the use of the r-word. The word “retarded” was once a diagnosis for people who are mentally delayed or intellectually challenged. However, in modern […]
Israel, Palestine, and Northeastern University: An Issue of Free Speech and Competing Interests
In March of 2014, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student group at Northeastern University, placed dozens of mock eviction notices in dormitories as an act of protest against the forced evictions of Palestinians in Israel.[1] The act was one in a string of controversial SJP protests, which ultimately resulted in the group’s suspension […]