The Ukraine invasion: wrestling at the edge of the nuclear cliff
The paradoxical combination of loud saber-rattling and cautious military strategy on both sides of the Ukraine war follows the new rules of conflict involving nuclear powers.
Formerly incarcerated women of color face worse health in later life
Incarceration takes a heavy toll on one’s mental and physical health. A growing share of older adults are now aging with incarceration histories and poor health.
The need for affordable and clean energy [podcast]
Check out Episode 75 of The Oxford Comment to hear from Martin J. Pasqualetti and Paul F, Meier on the need for affordable and clean energy, the history of energy in the US, and the dire implications of not changing our energy habits.
Has Russian journalism returned to Soviet era restrictions?
Simon Huxtable explores the history of Russian journalism in the Soviet Union and asks how, or whether, it compares to the situation of Russian journalists after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
The nuclear egg: challenging the dominant narratives of the atomic age
While researching early Egyptian perspectives on nuclear weapons, I repeatedly came across the symbol of the egg. The atomic bomb, and atomic technology more broadly, was frequently imagined and drawn as an egg in the period after August 1945 in Egyptian magazines and popular science journals.
A democracy, if we can keep it
At this fearful time in American democracy, the best way to starve anti-democratic forces of their energy is to change the subject away from conservative religion and demand investment in civic education, democratic localism, and human rights.
The politics of interracial friendship
There have been instances of interracial friendship even in the worst of times. Explore some of these noteworthy friendships, which have served as windows into the state of race relations in the United States.
Equity in health care [podcast]
There are many factors that affect our ability to be healthy, but we unfortunately do not all face the same barriers to accessing care. Such roadblocks can be related to cost, discrimination, location, sexual orientation, and gender identity, to name just a few.
Democracy at work? France’s uncertain political future [long read]
In the last of our essays, we discuss the unexpected outcome of the legislative elections and look back on the electoral cycle as a whole. What does French politics look like after a series of fractious campaigns? And do the results offer any hope for the future?
Global health diplomacy and North Korea in the COVID-19 era
The COVID-19 pandemic set off an unprecedented scale of border closures, a rise in health nationalism, and inequitable global distribution of vaccines, which have all exacerbated the humanitarian situation in low-income countries. This has led to calls for greater cooperation to support vulnerable populations beyond sovereign borders.
Hong Kong 2022: one country, two systems? [podcast]
The first of July 2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. It also marks the halfway point of a 50-year agreement between China and Hong Kong that established the “one country, two systems,” rule – a system designed to allow Hong Kong to “enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs” while still remaining a Special Administrative Region of China.
The perennial problem of succession [long read]
These days it is perhaps difficult to put oneself emphatically into a world in which the dynastic realm appeared for most men as the only imaginable ‘political’ system”, writes Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities, his seminal book on the origins of modern nationalism. But this was the world a large majority of all Europeans lived in before the French Revolution and in many cases up until the First World War.
A caution in exploring non-Western International Relations
The past quarter of a century has seen a burgeoning scholarship on the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR). By re-examining and revealing how past intellectuals and experts wrote about “the international,” this revisionist work on IR history generates a critical gaze at the assumptions on which IR stands today.
Aduhelm and the politics of drug approval in the United States
During the past several decades, the US Congress has authorized billions of dollars for Alzheimer’s disease research, but this has not yet led to a major breakthrough in the treatment. It is therefore understandable why there was a great deal of excitement about a new drug being developed by Biogen for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, aducanumab (Aduhelm).
Institutional distrust in Britain and America: a history
In the past few decades, trust and distrust have become frequent subjects of journalistic and academic discourse. Distrust of British and American public institutions has, in fact, a much longer and more complex history than most academics recognize.
The president and the Patriarch: the significance of religion in the Ukrainian crisis
Baffling though this seems to most Europeans, President Putin believes that by invading Ukraine he is defending Orthodox Christianity from the godless West.