Harvard Alumni Are Turning Up the Heat on Fossil Fuel Divestment
The Boston Globe/Getty In late November, hundreds of protesters stormed the field of the Yale Bowl during the annual Harvard-Yale football game, sprinting from both sidelines in the final minutes of halftime. Chanting “fossil fuels have got to go” as well as “OK boomer,” the rowdy crowd, bearing beer cans and vape pens, delayed the game for an hour…
Remembering Courtney Everts Mykytyn, Who Urged White Parents to Integrate Schools—With Respect
Roman Mykytyn “Drawing Lessons From Her Own Missteps, Activist Courtney Everts Mykytyn Urged White Parents to Integrate Schools With Respect” was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering public education. Sign up for their newsletters here: ckbe.at/newsletters The first time I ever spoke with Courtney Everts Mykytyn, she was distracted. I’d called her one…
How the 2010s Brought Back Strikes, School Walkouts, and Social Movements
Occupy Wall Street protesters wave signs and banners outside the Park Avenue home of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in October 2011.Andrew Burton/AP With economic inequality at the highest levels in decades, the climate in crisis, and a political system often unable to address popular demands or even elect the people’s choice, the last…
In Rural Colorado, the Kids of Coal Miners Learn to Install Solar Panels
Ethan Bates and Cody Sauve adjust the wiring box on a solar array outside their Delta High School classroom. Bates’ father was a coal mine foreman.Luna Anna Archey/High Country News This piece was originally published in High Country News and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. At a picnic table in a…
What Happens When Incarcerated People Get a World-Class Education?
Bard Prison Initiative students conjugate Spanish verbs at Eastern New York Correctional Facility.Skiff Mountain Films In the fall of 2015, a maximum-security prison in New York invited Harvard’s debate team to compete against a squad of three incarcerated men. The men, all convicted of violent crimes, knew they faced tough odds: Unlike their Harvard opponents,…
Books Have the Power to Rehabilitate. But Prisons Are Blocking Access to Them.
Behind the walls of California State Prison, Sacramento, six inmates gather in the library for their weekly short-story club. The librarian introduces the day’s pick, Doris Lessing’s A Sunrise on the Veld, and the men take turns reading it aloud. Some of them lean forward in their chairs as they listen; one traces the words…