The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program: Latest Articles

After calling for a national debate on whether Japan should arm itself with nuclear weapons-in the racy weekly magazine Shukan Playboy, no less-Shingo Nishimura paid the price for his frankness. In an uncharacteristic display of hyperspeed, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi sacked his defense vice minister on October 20.

A specter is haunting the world at the turn of the twenty-first century: the specter of regionalism. The experiments in confederation of the European Union—of which the most important is the adoption of the Euro as a pan-European currency—are thought by many to signal a movement from national sovereignty to regional integration,… more

At first glance, few would have predicted that the campaign for the District 1 seat on the L.A. School Board would wind up racially charged. After all, two-term incumbent Barbara M. Boudreaux and her opponent, Southern Christian Leadership Conference director Genethia Hayes, are both African American. Yet, as much as the campaign is about differing approaches to representing one of the lowest-achieving districts in… more

The most irritating thing about newspapers is their convention of presenting disagreements on matters of fact as nothing more than differences of opinion. Recently, a city official here resigned because he used the word " niggardly." A Washington Post story reported that the word "means different things to different people." Most of the Washingtonians quoted felt it could be taken as a slur, but others did not. And who is… more

Republicans propose using the federal budget surplus to finance a tax cut. They argue that the tax burden on the average American has grown. A tax cut may be a good or a bad idea for other reasons, but the notion of a growing tax burden rests on two highly misleading statistics.

The first is that "a typical mother and father who both work paid … more