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 S3013 Years Later, Star Wars Could Bring Back a Forgotten Sith Superpower   Star Wars’ extended television universe keeps bringing back characters we thought were gone. Boba Fett? He survived the Sarlacc and lived among the Tuskens. Anakin Skywalker? When Ahsoka nearly drowns, they reunite in the World Between Worlds. Even Qui-gon Jinn popped up as a Force ghost in the last minutes of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now, a new character recently revealed to still be among us has the potential to tie together two very different eras of Star Wars, and to become a villain unlike any other. Assajj Ventress is a Sith Nightsister with roots in Star Wars animation going back two decades. She first appeared in the non-canon series Star Wars: Clone Wars, then moved to the canonical Star Wars: The Clone Wars (yes, those are different shows), where we learned more about her and her terrifying powers, which combine her Nightsister background with Sith training. She was a fearsome villain, but was betrayed by her master, Count Dooku, and left the Sith to become a bounty hunter.
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S1How to Make a World: A Poem  Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel like metaphors — they feel like equations equating something previously unseen with something…
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S26 Kinds of Board Members -- and How to Influence Them  Boards are not monolithic. They often are composed of people with different kinds of personalities. This article describes six types: the narcissist, the data chaser, the deferential, the status hound, the unprepared, and the stakeholder champion. It offers tactics for influencing each.
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S3 Pair People and AI for Better Product Demand Forecasting  The winter 2024 issue features a special report on sustainability, and provides insights on developing leadership skills, recognizing and addressing caste discrimination, and engaging in strategic planning and execution.The winter 2024 issue features a special report on sustainability, and provides insights on developing leadership skills, recognizing and addressing caste discrimination, and engaging in strategic planning and execution.The framework is based on an extensive analysis of human-AI collaboration in forecasting at several companies from a variety of industries, through empirical research conducted by the authors at the MIT Digital Supply Chain Transformation lab and WHU — Otto Beisheim School of Management. The research team collaborated with companies to understand the challenges in their forecasting efforts and to investigate the specific roles of human and AI agents in the area, particularly the synergies of teaming them up. Research methodologies include experimental design analysis that quantifies the effect of human intervention in AI/machine learning demand forecasting and the development of AI/machine learning models that evaluate the value of expert judgment in the presence of other external features, such as clickstream data.
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S4Can AR and VR finally disrupt the exhausting culture of video meetings?  Jussi Havu, CEO of Helsinki-based Glue Collaborations, starts every Monday morning mingling with 30 of his colleagues in a virtual-reality meeting room. Glue's mission is to bring VR to the typical knowledge-work office. Havu is unsurprisingly optimistic about the business case for it. "There is business to be chased on this," he says.For millions of office workers forced to relocate from their cubicles to their couches in 2020, video calls became daily drudgery. Some workers felt alienated from their teams and exhausted by back-to-back meetings, while managers worried the autonomy granted by videoconferencing threatened productivity.
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S5William Onyeabor: One of modern music's greatest enigmas  He produced eight albums of his own music between 1977 and 1985 in a high-tech studio in rural Nigeria, and then gave up music completely, devoting himself to Christianity. In the years that followed, he achieved cult status across the world, and in 2009 a Nigerian-American music writer decided to put a compilation of his music together with backing from David Byrne's record label Luaka Bop – but the elusive figure proved difficult to track down. Finally, in 2013, the album was released and praised as one of the records of the year. It was titled, fittingly, Who Is William Onyeabor?Sporting a short afro that went perfectly with his signature cowboy hats and stylish suits, William Ezechukwu Onyeabor – who died in 2017 at the age of 70 – has been described by The New York Times as "a cipher with a tantalisingly mysterious back story".
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S6Sport and physical activity alone can't tackle health inequities in Indigenous communities  Janice Forsyth is affiliated with the Aboriginal Sport Circle, a national non-profit that focuses on Indigenous sport development in Canada. Organized sport is often positioned as a remedy for the many health issues that Indigenous Peoples face. While there are many benefits to sports participation, overstating those benefits risks obscuring the systemic problems they endure in trying to create their own visions for health.
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S7S8S9The contraceptive pill also affects the brain and the regulation of emotions  Oral contraceptives, also known as birth control pills, are used by more than 150 million women worldwide. Approximately one-third of teenagers in North America and Europe use them, making them the most prescribed drug for teenagers.It is well known that oral contraceptives have the power to alter a woman’s menstrual cycle. What’s less well known is that they can also have an effect on the brain, particularly in the regions that are important for regulating emotions.
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S10Ruling by UN's top court means Canada and the U.S. could be complicit in Gaza genocide  The International Court of Justice has issued a ground-breaking decision in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, ordering Israel to comply with six provisional measures to safeguard the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocidal violence.The court’s order is binding on Israel and formalizes the international legal obligations of other countries that are parties to the UN Genocide Convention.
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S11UN genocide ruling won't change Israel's behaviour: three reasons why  South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the latter’s military operation in Gaza, which South Africa calls acts of genocide. The excessive bombing campaign and wilful destruction of property, life and limb is hardly in dispute. Israel calls it legitimate acts of self-defense, following Hamas’s murderous incursion from Gaza on Israeli terrain on 7 October 2023. Hamas, shorthand for the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organisation founded in 1987. It has governed the Gaza Strip of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories since 2007.Except for the US and members of the European Union, most countries have expressed disquiet at the blatant slaughter of thousands of Palestinians and the levelling of Gaza.
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S12More than religion: why some of Israel's staunchest support comes from the Pacific Islands  One of the most perplexing yet poorly understood aspects of the international diplomatic response to the ongoing Gaza conflict has been the overwhelmingly pro-Israel orientation of Pacific Island states. During the voting on two United Nations resolutions (October 27th and December 12th) calling on Israel to reduce the death and suffering of Palestinian civilians, many Pacific countries voted either against the resolution or abstained.
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S13S14Images shape cities, but who decides which ones survive? It's a matter of visual justice  In the early hours, poster installers head out with buckets of wheat paste and gig advertisements, refreshing the thousands of square metres of street poster sites in Melbourne. Graffiti writers and artists also take to the walls with their pieces. Municipal surface cleaners soon follow with chemicals and pressure washers. Our city buildings are covered with posters, signs, art and graffiti. Their creators’ tools are images: profitable, seductive, confronting, removed.
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S15S16S17S18Israel-Palestinian conflict: is the two-state solution now dead?  The growing rift between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government over Israel’s war in Gaza is now in the open, with public disagreement between them on the viability of a two-state solution to the conflict.US President Joe Biden literally embraced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu within days of Hamas’ horrific attack in southern Israel on October 7, and the US has steadfastly protected Israel’s interests in the UN Security Council.
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S19S20S21Sediment runoff from the land is killing NZ's seas - it's time to take action  The fishers at Separation Point, between Golden Bay and Tasman Bay in New Zealand’s northwest South Island, used to be cautious. Something they called “hard coral” would tear their nets. If you dived down about 30 metres, you could see why: extensive reefs.These reefs were constructed by bryozoans, tiny polyp-like creatures that cooperate to build large, branching colonies. They are similar to corals but live in deeper and cooler water.
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S22S23Who we care about is limited - but our research shows how humans can expand their 'moral circle'  A cost-of-living crisis, the ongoing impact of COVID, climate change, and numerous global conflicts and refugee crises. When it feels like so many people are doing it tough, how do we decide where to direct our compassion? In a world that seems increasingly fractured, we wanted to find out if people can bridge the divide between “us” and “them” – to grow their feelings of wanting to help others, who would be typically beyond their “moral circle”.
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S24Pickle, anyone? 3 possible reasons women get cravings during pregnancy  Katelyn Barnes is an accredited dietitian and is employed by ACT Health Directorate, University of Queensland, and the Australian National University. Katelyn is a volunteer, elected executive member of the Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care.From pickles and french fries to oranges and ice cream, women and other people who are pregnant report craving a range of foods while they’re expecting.
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S25Congratulations! You're a Screen-Time Champ!  By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.© 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices
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S26S2730 Years Ago, an Iconic Sci-Fi Thriller Got a Strange and Underrated Remake  The notion of an extraterrestrial race arriving on Earth has long raised questions about our safety as a species. Would visitors from the stars be friendly? Would we be able to withstand their attacks if they weren’t?The image of a colonizing force overwhelming the planet is obviously political, and one that’s inspired countless stories. One particular story, and its various remakes, gives us our most perceptive examination of our ever-present fear of the Other. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the stuff of sci-fi legend, and its 1994 reimagining, Body Snatchers, brought the terror of assimilation and domination in the aftermath of political change to the forefront.
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S2810 Years Ago, a Controversial Video Game Icon Finally Got the Reboot She Deserved  Few video game protagonists carry a legacy as rich and complicated as Lara Croft, a name synonymous with the action-adventure and platformer genre that Tomb Raider helped popularize in 1999. On the one hand, Lara’s exploits as an archaeologist and treasure hunter are nothing short of legendary. On the other, Lara evokes complex discourse about the problematic lens of the male gaze, an aspect that is unfortunately ingrained into her history and evolution. But despite all that baggage, in the early 2010s, one game found a way to reinvent this iconic character in the best way possible.Developed by Crystal Dynamics, the Tomb Raider reboot is the first arc of the Survivor trilogy that etches Lara’s origins and mythos, reimagined from a fresh, enthralling perspective. This iteration of Lara is not the coolly-confident tomb raider/swashbuckler fans know and love. Instead, she’s a younger, inexperienced explorer thrust into the jaws of a deadly conspiracy on the lost island of Yamatai. An amalgamation of intense platforming and stealth that relies on quick-time events, Tomb Raider highlights the wonders of exploration amid constant dangers introduced right after the prologue where Lara has to escape a cavern with only a burning torch in hand.
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S299000-Year-Old Chewing Gum Reveals the Diet of a Stone Age Teenager  Some 9,700 years ago, on an autumn day, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia. They were hunter-gatherers fishing, hunting, and collecting resources in the area.Some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue just after eating trout, deer, and hazelnuts. Due to a severe gum infection (periodontitis), one of the teenagers had problems eating the chewy deer meat and preparing the resin by chewing it.
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S312024's Most Surreal Sci-Fi Movie is a Surprising Vision of the Apocalypse  When humanity is gone, what’s left? According to the gentle post-apocalyptic romance film Love Me, all that remains is a single sentient buoy floating in a vast ocean that contains the wreckage of civilization. In this undefined distant future, humanity has destroyed itself by some conflict, climate crisis, or plague; the details don’t really matter. What does matter is a weird, timid new love blooming between this sentient buoy and an orbiting satellite that contains the entire archive of human history.Written and directed by Sam and Andy Zuchero, Love Me is a quiet little sci-fi fable that initially seems to be an overly glib Black Mirror-esque cautionary tale. In the opening minutes, we see Earth’s entire history in fast-forward, with the tiny globe forming, turning blue, then being consumed by a fiery red. Then, when the Smart Buoy (Kristen Stewart) reaches out to the Satellite (Steven Yeun), we see more of what humanity has left behind, and it’s not flattering.
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S3250 Smart Things Under $30 on Amazon You'll End Up Using at Least Twice a Day  There are things you buy that you use once every so often — a power drill, ice cream maker, or set of champagne glasses, for example — and then there are the standby items that are on regular rotation. I’ve rounded up a bunch of clever things on Amazon that all fall into that latter category — you’re pretty much bound to reach for them multiple times a day. From tech gadgets to ingenious kitchen inventions to storage solutions, you’re about to discover some of the smartest things that’ll streamline your day-in-and-day-out routine.Rather than let your belongings clutter up your shelves, organize them with these fabric bins. You can also use them to tidy up your clothing drawers — use one for socks, another for underwear, and so on. You get 12 bins in a variety of small, medium, and large sizes, allowing you to arrange them in a way that best works for your space.
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S33S34Phone Apps Killed Gadgets, and Now AI Is Bringing Them Back  For the better part of two decades, we’ve devoted space in our pockets and bags for smartphones (ones that only keep getting bigger).The rectangular slabs have been MP3 players, PDAs, and cameras. The app economies on Android and iOS blew open the doors on what your smartphone could do, what services you could access, and what ways you could make money (i.e. selling in-app purchases and influencing).
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S35The 50 Cheapest, Easiest Home Upgrades That'll Save You So Much Money  Don’t run away when you see the word “upgrade” because this list is free of expensive home decor pieces or overpriced flooring. Instead, these easy-to-use pieces prove that you can add a few budget-friendly upgrades around your home, and they’ll actually save you a ton of money. Not having to buy a new sofa or spend too much on your power bill can feel like the best home upgrade ever — especially when they’re so easy to install or work into your routine.This pet hair remover is able to be reused on surfaces all over your home, from your couch to your bedding to your clothes. It saves you money because you won’t have to toss a ton of those sticky lint roller sheets every day — and it keeps your stuff clean. The compartment has plenty of space to hold onto all of the stray pet fur that loves to cover your couch, and it’s easy to empty with the press of a button.
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S36Scientists Just Discovered a Second "Chicken from Hell" Dinosaur -- And Reopened a Major Debate  Were dinosaurs already on their way out when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, ending the Cretaceous, the geologic period that started about 145 million years ago? It’s a question that has vexed paleontologists like us for more than 40 years.In the late 1970s, debate began about whether dinosaurs were at their peak or in decline before their big extinction. Scientists at that time noted that while dinosaur diversity seemed to have increased in the geologic stage that spanned 83.6 million to 71.2 million years ago, the number of species on the scene seemed to decrease during the last few million years of the Cretaceous. Some researchers have interpreted this pattern to mean that the asteroid that struck the Gulf of Mexico was simply the final blow for an already vulnerable group of animals.
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S37S38'My art is oratory, Socrates.' An ancient warning on the power and peril of rhetoric | Aeon Videos  In his dialogue Gorgias, Plato drafts a fictional conversation between Socrates and a group of pre-Socratic philosophers and teachers known as sophists, who were famed for their mastery of rhetoric. This experimental video essay from Epoché Magazine combines somewhat cryptic archival visuals, a haunting, dissonant score, and text from an exchange between Socrates and the titular Gorgias on the nature of oratory. In particular, Socrates’ interrogations address the powers and perils of rhetoric as a persuasive device, especially if used to convince mass audiences to adopt a ‘belief without knowledge’. Embedded in the exchange is both a clear expression Plato’s anti-democratic sentiment and a critique of the ‘art of oratory’ that still resonates some two centuries later.
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S39S40S41S42S43S44S45S46S47S48S49TV channels are using AI-generated presenters to read the news. The question is, will we trust them?  For 22 minutes, a variety of polished news anchors stand in front of the camera and run down the day's news in a video posted on social media. But none of them are real. Instead, the anchors are generated by artificial intelligence (AI).For more technology news and insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter. The twice-weekly email decodes the biggest developments in global technology, with analysis from BBC correspondents around the world. Sign up for free here.
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S50Environmental Protection Does Not Kill Jobs  The argument that we have to choose between saving nature and strengthening the economy is a false dichotomyOne of the most damaging logical fallacies is the “fallacy of the excluded middle,” also known as a false dichotomy or false binary—the ploy of presenting a problem as either/or with no other choices and no middle ground. It's often used to make people reject something they want by persuading them they can't have it unless they give up something else they want even more. An example is the supposed trade-off between jobs and the environment.
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S51Science News Briefs from around the World: February 2024  A missing mammal rediscovered in Indonesia, a speedy new species of dinosaur in Brazil, Ivory Coast chimpanzees that snoop on their neighbors, and much more in this month’s Quick HitsActions to reduce poisoning and electrocution from power lines have stabilized the endangered Egyptian Vulture's population in the Balkans. These birds are often killed across their 14-country migration route; only about 50 breeding pairs remain.
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S52S5316 Great Deals on Planners, Desks, and Parenting Gear  January is nearly over, so if your New Year's resolution was to get your house in order, you're in luck. This weekend, some of our favorite accessories for home offices and nurseries are on sale, including keyboards, monitors, baby carriers, and strollers.Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.
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S54Will Celebrities Be Real on BeReal?  The mobile app BeReal has taught us that we are all essentially the same: unkempt, unscripted, and a little boring. Now it wants us to see that celebrities and brands are just like us too.The social media platform announced this week that, beginning February 6, celebrities and brands will officially join regular users on the app. They’ll be given verified accounts, and they’ll appear in the app as “RealPeople” or “RealBrands.” Regular users will be able to follow these official accounts (as “RealFans”) and engage with them by tagging them in posts; the celebrities and brands can then re-share their fans’ posts in their feeds.
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S55The Xiaomi Poco X6 Series Is a Great Value, but Not Our Pick  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDIf you’re in the market for an affordable Android smartphone, the latest midrange Poco duo from Xiaomi should be on your radar. Available now in the UK, Europe, and India, but not the US, the Poco X6 (£319) and Poco X6 Pro (£369) offer stacked spec sheets with few weaknesses. You can expect excellent displays, good battery life, and solid performance from both, though there are a few cons lurking here.
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S56Power Up Anywhere With the Best Travel Adapters  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDWhether you're planning a country-hopping odyssey or a quick business trip, your journey will go more smoothly with the right kit. That includes good travel adapters so you can safely charge all of your gadgets wherever you land. We've tested several, and our favorites below will work in most parts of the world.
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S57Zapping plants in "eSoil" makes them grow 50% larger  A new electrically conductive “eSoil” could make hydroponic farming even more productive — and help ensure a sustainable new source for the human food supply.“[W]e can get seedlings to grow faster with less resources,” said Eleni Stavrinidou, leader of the Linköping University team that developed the new substrate.
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S58S59Don't San Francisco-ize Clean Energy  What happens when environmentalists and sympathetic lawmakers fail to see the downside of too much legal reviewOne great paradox of our time is that to limit humanity’s harms to the planet, we must decarbonize the economy; but to decarbonize the economy, we must build tons of new stuff: wind farms, solar fields, geothermal wells, and above all electricity-transmission lines. Last month, a broad coalition of congressional Democrats released their vision for how to do this. Their bill, the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act, includes many good ideas, such as clarifying the federal government’s authority to approve interstate transmission lines, requiring public utilities to account for the “social cost of carbon” in setting rates, and addressing a shortage of electrical transformers.
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S60The Supreme Court Shouldn't Punt on This One  The Court needs to give the country a clear, final answer on Donald Trump’s eligibility for office.For the most part, America’s governing institutions have thus far responded to the problem of Donald Trump’s authoritarian aspirations by punting—passing the ball to some other actor in our political system. The criminal prosecutor Robert Mueller decided that Congress, not the Department of Justice, where he was special counsel, should assess whether Trump had committed any crimes in the 2016 election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly blamed Trump for January 6 but voted to acquit him in his Senate impeachment trial anyway, on the grounds that holding Trump accountable for his actions was the responsibility of the courts. Similarly, the overwhelming majority of state election officials who have considered whether Trump should be deemed ineligible to appear on ballots have concluded that such decisions are really best left “up to the courts.”
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S61The GOP's Great Betrayal  Congressional Republicans are blocking crucial aid to Israel and Ukraine out of sheer servility to Trump.On January 17, House Speaker Mike Johnson led a candlelight vigil at the Capitol to mark the recent passing of the 100th day of hostage-holding by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Members of Congress assembled shoulder to shoulder with families of hostages. The Republican speaker delivered a heartfelt speech. “We must stand together in solidarity with the Jewish people,” he said. “And we will, from the synagogues in Brooklyn to the country churches of my home in northwest Louisiana, from the Senate to the House—we support Israel, believing that we can overcome the darkness with light.”
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S62A Powerhouse of a Comedic Actress  This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Elaine Godfrey, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has covered the Iowa caucuses, the national fight over abortion rights, and America’s most misunderstood marsupial.
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S63Justin Timberlake's Air of Desperation  As a musical guest on SNL, the star’s changed status in the pop-cultural universe was hard to ignore.Once upon a time, having Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live would have been a thrilling thing. In the mid-2000s, the pop star emerged as one of the show’s favorite recurring hosts, the kind of mega-famous celeb who seemed like he would be down for anything, such as dressing up in a giant mascot costume or putting his, ahem, dick in a box.
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S64Kerala Ishtu: Creamy vegetable stew  Close your eyes and think of Indian curry, and it is very likely that a rich, orangey-red gravy comes to mind, like the fiery chicken tikka masala; or a thick, green sauce that is the base for popular dishes like saag paneer or hariyali chicken.But far away from these dishes that originate in the north Indian state of Punjab – both in terms of geography and flavours – is the Kerala ishtu from the deep south. Ishtu, a variation on the English word stew, is a mild, creamy, pale dish made with seasonal vegetables and enhanced with just a hint of spices. It's a hearty dish that comes together in less than 30 minutes and can be found in home cooking as well as in restaurants serving Kerala cuisine.
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S65Matric results: South Africa's record school pass rates aren't what they seem - what's really happening in the education system  South Africa’s matric (grade 12) class of 2023, which wrote final school-leaving exams late last year, has been hailed by the country’s minister of basic education for achieving “extraordinary” results. Of the 691,160 candidates who wrote the National Senior Certificate exams, 82.9% – that’s 572,983 – passed, up from 80.1% of the class of 2022. And more candidates than ever before obtained marks that allow them to study for a bachelor’s degree.All of the country’s nine provinces managed to improve on their 2022 pass rates. This is despite the after-effects of the COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when this class was in grade 9 and grade 10 respectively. The results also reflect a steady uptick in the overall national pass rate, which has risen from 60% in 2009 and stabilised over the past two years at above 80%.
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S66Colorado voters seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot tell Supreme Court Jan. 6 'will forever stain' US history  The plaintiffs seeking to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballots filed their brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 26, 2024. They asked the court to uphold the ruling by Colorado’s highest court that Trump engaged in an insurrection against the United States and, accordingly, should be disqualified from the presidential election under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.Trump “refused to accept the will of the over 80 million Americans who voted against him,” the brief filed by Norma Anderson and several other plaintiffs said. “Instead of peacefully ceding power, Trump intentionally organized and incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol in a desperate effort to prevent the counting of electoral votes cast against him.”
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S67Lagos city planning has a history of excluding residents: it's happening again  In Lagos, a megacity with a population estimated at 21 million, the state government has been building a satellite city, known as Eko Atlantic. At the same time is has been destroying informal settlements, where as much as 60%-70% of Lagos’s population may live.Makoko, a community on the mainland of Lagos, is one of the places threatened with demolition. Its residents, who originated from coastal communities in the Niger Delta, Benin, Togo and Ghana, claim to have occupied the area since the early 1900s. Half of the population resides in houses constructed on stilts over the Lagos Lagoon. Makoko faces significant challenges, including a lack of infrastructure like roads and water supply. In 2012, the state government served an eviction notice to Makoko residents, claiming that the area represented a security risk and interfered with its planning agenda.
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S68The Future of Academic Freedom  On January 2nd, after months of turmoil around Harvard’s response to Hamas’s attack on Israel, and weeks of turmoil around accusations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned as the university’s president. Any hope that this might relieve the outsized attention on Harvard proved to be illusory. The week after Gay stepped down, two congressional committees demanded documents and explanations from Harvard, on topics ranging from antisemitism, free speech, discrimination, and discipline, to admissions, donations, budgets, and legal settlements. Some at Harvard might say this is a crisis sparked by external forces: the government, donors, and the public. But it developed long before Gay became president and won’t end with her fall. Over time, Harvard, like many other universities, has allowed the core academic mission of research, intellectual inquiry, and teaching to be subordinated to other values that, though important, should never have been allowed to work against it.Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. I’ve been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students’ suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous exchanges on difficult topics, but professors across the country have agreed to similar requests.
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S69Nine Regular People Tell Donald Trump to Shut Up and Pay Up  “This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all,” the lawyer Roberta Kaplan said on Friday morning, during closing arguments in the case styled Carroll v. Trump. Five years ago, Kaplan’s client, the writer E. Jean Carroll, wrote an article in New York magazine describing how Donald Trump once forced himself on her in a Manhattan department-store dressing room. Since then, Trump has regularly attacked Carroll publicly, not only denying that the assault happened but calling her a “whack job” who should “pay dearly” for entering “dangerous territory.” Online, his legions of fans have subjected her to further threats and abuse, for daring to speak out against their supreme leader. On Friday afternoon, a jury of nine New Yorkers sided with her, saying that the former President had defamed her, and ordering him to pay dearly: $83.3 million in damages.It’s a huge number. Last spring, after hearing a related case that Carroll brought against Trump, an earlier jury had also sided with Carroll, concluding that Trump had sexually abused her and then defamed her—but the award in that case was five million dollars. During this second trial, which began in mid-January, Carroll’s lawyers emphasized that Trump’s attacks on their client continued, even after the first jury found against him. “This is a fake story, made-up story,” Trump said at a CNN town hall last spring. “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?” If anything, the attacks escalated after the last trial. “For more than four years, he has not stopped,” Shawn Crowley, another of Carroll’s lawyers, said. “How much money will it take to make him stop?” Kaplan, during her closing arguments, reminded the jurors that Trump claims to be a billionaire. “It will take an unusually high punitive-damages award to stop Donald Trump,” she said. She suggested at least twenty-four million dollars. The jurors came to $83.3 million all on their own.
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S70The Importance of the I.C.J. Ruling on Israel  On Friday, the International Court of Justice, in The Hague—one of the six principal parts of the United Nations—found that Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces; “prevent and punish” the incitement to genocide; and insure that humanitarian aid to Gaza is increased. South Africa had accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during the war that began in response to Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack. (Twelve hundred people were killed in that attack; more than twenty-five thousand Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment.)The ruling of the I.C.J.—which is distinct from the International Criminal Court—fell short of finding Israel guilty of having committed genocide, but such a decision could take years; South Africa had also urged the court to order an immediate ceasefire, which it did not do. (The court does not have an enforcement mechanism.) But the I.C.J. still found cause for great concern about Israel’s military actions, and also the statements of its leaders. “At least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza,” the court found, “appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention.”
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