The American Agora
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In April, a Brooklyn woman suffered second-degree burns after a man attacked her while she was taking out her trash. Investigated as a possible hate crime, it is one of many incidents challenging the safety of Asian Americans during the COVID-19 epidemic. In March, the FBI warned that hate crimes against Asian Americans were likely to increase based on the assumption that the “US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations.” Not only are Asian Ame

Before you read my opinion, I’d like to have a quick aside. In this piece I talk a lot about the negative consequences of “heat.” I spend a lot of time in the article criticising the institutions of the US, and thus I worry about contributing to this heat. I have no intention of blaming any single individual or group for the sorry state of US politics. I don’t desire to contribute to this heat. Instead, I hope to provide a dramatic warning and analysis of the ills that face o

“This is not going to happen while I’m the chair.” Those were the exact words chair of the Board of Trustees Jeff Sine told me in the Spring of 2019, the semester after I had published “Board of Trustees rejected 2014 committee report recommending fossil fuel divestment,” a 7,000-word article chronicling a) the divestment story between 2012 and 2014, b) a report by the Advisory Committee on Social Responsible Investing (ACSRI) to the Finance and Investment Committee of the Bo

Amid the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic, there is one brewing crisis that is being overlooked. Although it may seem inconsequential compared to the many other issues today, this crisis will have permanent and widespread effects on our country. It is a crisis at one of the longest-running institutions in our nation’s history: the US Post Office. One side-effect of the pandemic is that mail volumes are crashing. Despite the upturn in online retail and delivery, overall use o

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: The subject of this article, who has requested anonymity, told her story over four months' worth of interviews, and has consented to the publication of certain medical details mentioned. “Do you know what a manic episode feels like?” Lex asks me. I shake my head no. “Well, it’s like you have a lot of energy pent up and for days at a time. You can’t sleep. I’ve gotten two hours of sleep a night. So you try to do something. You try to work out, you try to

DISCLAIMER: The Agora's Editor-in-Chief, Mark Lu, ran an unsuccessful campaign for AUSG Comptroller this cycle. Therefore, he was not involved in the formulation of these questions. Q1: How would you justify the practicality of AUSG, based on the little enumerated powers SG is endowed with? How do you think you can enact real change? Q2: When you hear the phrase “moving forward,” what does that mean to you and how would you define that in policy? Q3: How would you increase tr