Spring 2021

“I think an unaccompanied scholar, particularly a male, probably has the best of all possible worlds at the Institute.” 
—Social Science Member in the 1970s, male, age 50 at the moment of the questionnaire in 1976

Founded in 1930, the Institute for...

The current pandemic intensifies the need for universal health insurance, but it raises, in some quarters, the specter of “moral hazard.” This term, with its troubling history, is taken to refer to incentives for patients to overuse healthcare...

In colloquial speech the word “duality” connotes two contrasting facets of a single entity, often at odds with one another. The concept is anthropomorphized in mythology by deities or monsters with multiple faces, like the two-faced Janus, Roman god of doorways. It is also enshrined in pop culture in the double visages of Jekyll and Hyde, and in the Batman villain Harvey Dent (alias Two-Face). In physics and mathematics, the concept of “duality” takes on a more positive connotation because of its ubiquity, utility, and power. 

The dramatic story of the origins of the Second World War has long been used by politicians to buttress foreign policy. The stark lesson, certainly in Britain, where the consequences of naïveté were the most severe, but also for the French, who...