World News Insights: Opinion Articles

All the condemnations of the Taliban after it banned Afghan women from attending university are not enough, be they international, regional, or Arab, and that includes the statement by the Saudi Foreign Ministry and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar.   What we need now is actions, not statements…

I once watched a movie with a friend who is knee-deep in ideology. It was a police film that began by presenting a rosy image of the police: he helps the oppressed and seeks to uphold justice and apply the law, putting the public interest above his own and any other private interest.   My friend…

There would seem to be a sincere commitment across America these days to try to listen to one another across divides. To engage nuance rather than pretending that everything is, as it were, black and white. To address discrimination without devolving into the Jacobinesque routines of cancel culture…

The clearest signal that the US economy is likely to fall into a recession in the next year is coming from interest rates. One of the first people to establish the signaling value of interest rates was Arturo Estrella, then an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I interviewed him…

The protest movement in Iran that broke out 13 weeks ago has forced the world to change how it deals with the Iranian regime in domestic and international matters. It seems that many of the concerned Western states have decided to abandon the flexibility with which they dealt with the Iranian…

Russian military lore is full of references to the cold months ahead in that part of Europe as "General Winter". So, it is no surprise that Vladimir Putin, disappointed in the performance of his generals, is looking at "General Winter" to help him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as it had…

As Mediterranean countries look to chart a path forward in the wake of the multiple crises that have upended economies, accelerating regional integration becomes more critical than ever. Increased trade flows, two-way investments, and mobility across the Northern, Southern and Eastern…

Many rolled their eyes as they heard Prime Minister Najib Mikati claim that anyone shown to have been involved in the killing of Irish UNIFIL peacekeeper Sean Rooney would be punished! No one in Lebanon was surprised to see him angrily ask what has happened to the investigation days after the crime…

Everyone in my professional life — fellow faculty members, other writers — is up in arms about ChatGPT, the new artificial intelligence tool that can write like a human being. Tech is not supposed to be human. It is only ever supposed to be humanoid. But this chatbot can take multiple ideas and…

“The Whale,” Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, is one you hope, desperately, will be seen by an audience that has the necessary cultural literacy, the empathy, to watch the story and recognize that the onscreen portrayal of fatness bears little resemblance to the lived experiences of fat people. It…

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s speech at the second Baghdad conference in Jordan made clear to all the countries in the region, as well as those who engage with it, that Iran is dazed and confused. The foreign minister was giving his speech in French before giving it again…

“The relationship with the other” can perhaps sum up many of the problems we face in the era of identities. The earliest cultural response to this issue might be Aristotle’s. Indeed, the “master,” who wrote “The Poetics” 150 years after the era of Athenian tragedies, took the opposite position…