Opinion

IAS scholars share informed and diverse perspectives on high-level issues, contemporary society, and social change, lending expert insight to the global discourse.

Social Science

In the Mediterranean, the Banality of Shipwrecks

By Lorenzo Alunni and Didier Fassin

After the death of several dozens of refugees, most of them fleeing Afghanistan, in a shipwreck off the coasts of Calabria, in the South of Italy, on the 26th of February 2023, Lorenzo Alunni, current Member in the School of Social Science, and Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor, wrote a column for Le Monde, analyzing how Europe had shifted from a politics of rescue to a criminalization of humanitarianism.

Opinion

Blasphemy Is Not a DEI Issue

By Joan Wallach Scott, Professor Emerita in the School of Social Science: 

"[The Hamline case] is not an example of any tension between diversity and academic freedom, but of the confusion between fair treatment of minority students (respect and care for their well-being) and capitulation to religious censorship. The one does not require the other."

Opinion

Asian American Students Face Bias, but It’s Not What You Might Think

By Jennifer Lee, current Member in the School of Social Science: 

"Affirmative action is on trial again. This time, opponents of race-conscious college admission practices are claiming that Asian Americans are hurt by it. The plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which presented oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Monday, allege that Harvard holds Asian American applicants to higher academic standards and rates them lower than other students on personal characteristics, such as fit, courage and likability."

Opinion

A history of U.S. interference worsened Pakistan’s devastating floods

By Maira Hayat, current Member in the School of Social Science: 

"As Pakistan is enduring devastating floods and an ongoing humanitarian disaster — including decimated crops, more than 500 children dead, hospitals filled with malaria and dengue-infected people and millions of people displaced from their homes — its water infrastructure and management have come under increasing scrutiny.

Opinion

History Is Always About Politics

By Joan Wallach Scott, Professor Emerita in the School of Social Science:

"In his recent essay in these pages on the vexed question of 'presentism' in the discipline of history, David Bell offers a soothing alternative to the American Historical Association president James Sweet’s clumsy dismissal of 'presentism' as a deviation from the true path of historical scholarship."

Opinion

IAS Scholars on the James Webb Telescope’s First Images

“We can see the unseen. An astonishing deep-field image of crashing galaxies and bygone nebulae. A glimpse at what the death of our own sun might look like. Baby stars being born perched on cosmic cliffs. The first photographs of the JWST are breathtaking, and they will dramatically change how we understand the universe."