Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Steven A Cook
It is fair to say that Omar Suleiman’s bid to be Egypt’s next president is one of the most unexpected developments in post-Mubarak Egypt. The last time anyone had seen or heard from Suleiman, he appeared on Egyptian television and declared
Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign yesterday and the air in America is abuzz with what will happen next in the Republican nomination race. We sat down to chat politics with Sam Popkin, author of the upcoming The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House. We asked how Mitt Romney will fare in a general election and why he has been underestimated as a candidate.
By Geir Lundestad
Since around 1870 the United States has had the largest economy in the world. In security matters, however, particularly in Europe, the US still played a limited role until the Second World War. In 1945, at the end of the war, the United States was clearly the strongest power the world had ever seen. It produced almost as much as the rest of the world put together. Its military lead was significant; its “soft power” even more dominant.
By Christina Bohannan and Herbert Hovenkamp
The Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Collaborative Services (Mayo Clinic) v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289 (March 20, 2012), cited Creation Without Restraint to reject a patent on a process for determining the proper dosage of drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases.
By Michael Biggs
Since March 2011, over thirty Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against repression in China. This is the latest manifestation of a resurgence in suicide protest — where someone kills him or herself for a political cause, without harming anyone else. The most famous recent case is Mohammad Bouazizi in Tunisia, whose self-immolation sparked the Arab spring in 2011, and whose example was followed by many others in North Africa. Less familiar in the West, the campaign for a separate state of Telangana within India (to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh) was accompanied by a wave of self-immolation in 2010-2011.
I remember turning up on my first day as a junior academic in one of the older universities in the UK and proudly talking about my work as an anthropologist in Thailand working with young prostitutes, only to be met with the withering put-down that ‘it didn’t sound like anthropology — more like comparative social work.’ If it involved children, it couldn’t be a serious area of study. At the time I was totally deflated but today, such a comment would be nonsensical.
By Elvin Lim
Democrats and the Obama administration have seriously if not fatally fumbled on the simple answer to a question Justice Scalia posed: “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli?”
By Matthew Flinders
From Canada to Australia — and all points in between — something has gone wrong. A gap has emerged between the governors and the governed. A large dose of scepticism about the promises and motives of politicians is an important and healthy part of any democracy, but it would appear that healthy pessimism has mutated into a more pathological form of corrosive cynicism.
By Edward Zelinsky
Like many of us, President Obama is a Warren Buffett fan. Most prominently, the president advocates, as a matter of tax policy, the so-called “Buffett Rule.” This rule responds to Mr. Buffett’s observation that his effective federal income tax rate is lower than the tax rate of Mr. Buffett’s secretary. In President Obama’s formulation, the Buffett Rule calls for taxpayers making at least $1,000,000 annually to pay federal income tax at a 30% bracket.
Rick Santorum had a great night, but he would need to win 70 percent of the delegates moving forward to unseat frontrunner Mitt Romney. That’s not going to happen, but it’ll be a painful road toward the increasingly inevitable. As late in this game, powerful conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Rush Limbaugh, and Tony Perkins are still advocating for Rick Santorum and other non-moderate candidates. Every day they continue to do this, they make less likely confident predictions from outside the beltway that Republicans will come together in the Fall against Obama.
With the season premiere of AMC’s Mad Men coming this weekend, we thought we’d use this opportunity to introduce you to one of the most highly respected scientists in the field of Persuasion. As a matter of fact, many people consider Dr. Robert Cialdini as the “Godfather of influence”. What better way to do that then provide you with the foreword he wrote to a just-released book, Six Degrees of Social Influence. Enjoy his words below and enjoy the premiere.
The Trojan War. The history of piracy. The great naval battles between Carthage and Rome. The Jewish Diaspora into Hellenistic worlds. The rise of Islam. The Grand Tours of the 19th century. The mass tourism of the 20th. We may have missed World Maritime Day on March 17, but we can still admire the watery wonder of the sea and its peoples. And now a quick quiz on the history of the Mediterranean…
By Richard Marggraf Turley, Jayne Elisabeth Archer and Howard Thomas
“What if the field in Keats’s ode was (cue drum roll), not an allegorical field, not a cipher for, say, St Peter’s Field in Manchester (the location of the Peterloo Massacre), nor a mythic site of bucolic languor, but an actual Winchester field …
Louis René Beres
It is time to look behind the news. Operation Iraqi Freedom is now officially concluded; U.S. operations in Afghanistan are reportedly moving in a similar direction. More generically, however, debate about combat strategy and tactics remains ongoing.
By Eric Anderson
Sexual taboos are falling in Western cultures. Largely due to the Internet, today’s youth take a much more sex-positive view to what comes naturally than the generations before them. They have shed the fear and misconception of masturbation. They enjoy a hook-up culture, where sex is easier to come by; and there is less of a double standard for women who also enjoying these freedoms.
By Robert F. Hurley
Greg Smith’s March 14, 2012 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs” is a familiar story for those who follow the betrayal and repair of trust. Smith tells a story of his frustration and disillusionment at Goldman changing from a culture that valued service to clients to one that rewarded those who made the most money for the firm even if it betrayed client interests.