It took her seven years, but Kalpana (name changed) felt she was finally close to her dream of getting an undergraduate degree and working for the Indian government. She had given up college in the past due to family problems, but a few years ago re-enrolled in an undergraduate program. Her studies were going well… more
The coronavirus has profoundly affected protest movements by simultaneously empowering governments and activists. In doing so, it has set up a race between protestors and governments to win the social media war—a drama that is playing out in different ways across the world. Although messy and nonuniform, social movements under COVID-19 fall into two broad… more
When Singapore became the country with the highest number of COVID-19 infections outside China in February, the small city-state quickly earned praise from Harvard epidemiologists and the WHO as the “gold standard” for its “near-perfection detection” of the virus, and it seemed that all was achieved without going into extreme lockdown. By late March, as… more
On April 11, Geumsun Oh put on a face mask and plastic gloves, and left her home for the first time in two months. The 92-year-old Seoul resident had reason to be cautious. She was diabetic, suffered from high blood pressure, and, at that point, the coronavirus had already claimed 211 lives in South Korea.… more
At Columbia Global Reports, we are looking for writers who can do firsthand reporting in faraway places, make original arguments about major issues, and write prose that is a pleasure to read. That combination of skills is very, very difficult to find; anybody who has all three, or even two out of three, is a rare talent, for whose time and energy we always find ourselves competing against others who also want them.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is known best for its robust but troubled mining sector, which attracts 80 percent of the country’s Foreign Direct Investment but generates only 10 percent of its tax revenue. But far less attention is paid to Congo’s agriculture, which generates 42 percent of its GDP and involves the majority of… more
Those who recall Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial $100 million philanthropic experiment to transform Newark public schools might be surprised to learn that Zuckerberg, the Gates Foundation, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and other Silicon Valley visionaries have been quietly investing in another educational experiment an ocean away. Bridge International Academies was conceived in 2007 to be the… more
Critics called it the “sleep campaign” because Angela Merkel did everything in her power to send voters into a slumber. Her tactic in the German federal election, termed “asymmetric demobilisation,” was designed to depress turnout amongst opposition parties by making a maximally inoffensive pitch to the electorate. It successfully pushed her main opponents, the Social… more
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1991, while she was under house arrest by Myanmar’s ruling military junta. Freed in 2010, she was finally able to travel to Sweden to deliver her acceptance speech in 2012, using the occasion to describe visiting migrant workers and refugees in Thailand who, as she… more
The lifecycle of the populist movement is well-known. In opposition, where they may whinge at leisure about corrupt elites and the bias media, populists flourish and multiply; but once they win power, they almost always suffer an identity crisis. It’s tough to lambaste the establishment if you are the establishment. Just ask Syriza, the radical… more
