Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

How should one judge a president’s handling of foreign policy?

How should politicians and policymakers respond to economic inequality? A new collection of essays offers some answers, but much work still needs to be done to turn academic ideas into practical proposals.

According to conventional wisdom, the deterioration of US-Israeli relations is the result of personal animosity between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama. But ill-will is more of a symptom than a cause. In fact, the increased friction reflects a new Israeli grand strategy. Rather than seeking to minimize differences with the United States over Iran and Palestine, as previous Israeli governments had done, Netanyahu has worked to diversify Israel's international partnerships, cultivating new friends - from India to China to Saudi Arabia - so that Israel is less dependent on the United States.

On January 30, after word got out that a large number of U.S. State Department officials were preparing a formal, well-argued dissent against President Donald Trump’s cruel executive order on immigration, the White House reacted with stung indignation. Even before the cable was submitted by an astonishing total of nearly a thousand State Department staffers, Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, issued an extraordinary rebuke to the professional diplomats.

In Eyes of the Storm, Roksana Badruddoja explores the perceptions of second-generation South Asian-American women about daily social practices in the U.S. and how they view themselves in comparison to broader American society. She accomplishes this by engaging in a year-long feminist ethnography (in 2004) with a cross-national sample of twenty-five women in the U.S., spending a day in the life of each woman eating, drinking, and talking about work, partners, families, food, clothing, and how they feel about being children of immigrants, among other things. The research on which Eyes of the Storm is based explores the meaning of national belonging (and lack of belonging) for a group of "second-generation" South Asian women in America. Here, Badruddoja focuses on both the conceptual and theoretical perspectives of the social, economic, cultural, aesthetic, and political dimensions of transnational migration, which includes the effects of population circulations and demographic change (community formation, segregation, and integration).

The mood of much of the world is grim these days. Turmoil in the Middle East, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees; random terrorist attacks across the globe; geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe and Asia; the end of the commodity supercycle; slowing growth in China; and economic stagnation in many countries - all have combined to feed a deep pessimism about the present and, worse, the future.

Ó Gráda argues that some very poor economies are especially vulnerable to famines. In places where the level of food consumption is already low, even small shocks - a shortfall in food production, for example, or a disruption in the supply chain - can lead to a full-scale crisis.


It is said that bad things come in threes. If there’s any truth to that, the first two were sure as hell about to show up at my front door. I hadn’t been home long, maybe a half hour or so spent watching the lingering remnants of the Kona sunset leach from the sky while I tipped a cold bottle of Asahi to my lips. I had skipped my regular visit to Snyder’s bar, and had dropped in at Lola’s instead, in order to catch a little face time with Lani, who bartended there.

After a decade-plus of war, the lessons for the United States are clear: fight fewer, more traditional wars and fight them more decisively. Above all, avoid getting entangled in the politics of chaotic countries.

2019 will be a dangerous year for cross-Strait relations.

On November 15, 2012, the day he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping stood onstage at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, to reflect back on his country’s 5,000 years of history. After citing China’s “indelible contribution” to world civilization, Xi called for “the great revival of the Chinese nation.” And he acknowledged that others had “failed one time after another” to realize that goal. Implicit in Xi’s remarks was a promise: unlike his predecessors, he would not fall short.

The problem with Washington's planning obsession.

Turkey’s military leaders rarely make public appearances at political events. But on August 7, General Hulusi Akar, the country’s chief of staff, appeared in uniform before a rally of more than a million people in Istanbul, alongside President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, and the leaders of the Turkish opposition. Through numerous interruptions for applause, Akar thanked Turkey’s civilians for helping to quash July’s coup attempt.

The United States has a variety of legal and illegal drug markets, and more than its share of the evils of addiction, illicit trafficking, and drug-related incarceration. But two of those markets—those for cannabis and opioids—will force themselves on the attention of the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

On March 30, 2008, several hundred people gathered at the waterfront in San Francisco. They had come to witness the unveiling of a monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: 2,800 Americans who joined some 35,000 other volunteers from more than 50 countries to defend the Spanish Republic against fascist forces during Spain’s civil war. The conflict, which raged from 1936 until 1939, led to the deaths of around half a million people, including at least 750 Americans.

In present-day China, hundreds of millions of people are turning to faith for answers they cannot find elsewhere in their radically secular society. This burst of religious activity poses risks for the Chinese Communist Party and as Beijing pursues a new, harder line on social change, striking the delicate balance between toleration and repression may become harder.

The Millennium Development Goals are due to expire at the end of 2015, and debate has turned to what should come next, with hundreds of new targets already proposed. Governments need to focus carefully and decide which goals offer the greatest returns on investment.

Robots have the potential to greatly improve the quality of our lives at home, at work, and at play. Customized robots working alongside people will create new jobs, improve the quality of existing jobs, and give people more time to focus on what they find interesting, important, and exciting.

Merry Strand spent all her days in a rural North Carolina mountain town before being lured to the Atlantic coast by the promise of an inheritance from the biological father she never knew existed. The windfall could save her adopted family from financial ruin, but in order to receive it she must earn it by completing a series of tasks.

As a manager, you're shouldering more responsibilities—from maximizing your team's performance to increasing your company's market share to building profitable customer relationships. On top of all that, you need to orchestrate your own time and keep your career on track. The challenges are stacking up—but you've got less time to figure out how to tackle them. How are you supposed to resolve this dilemma? Happily, help is on the way: the new Management Tips from the Harvard Business Review.