by Kathleen Goodwin Education is arguably the most interesting lens by which one is able to view the race issue at the core of American society. I would venture that there are many white Americans who pay lip service to the value of diversity but wouldn't dream of sending their children to a school that…

by Kathleen Goodwin There have been 170 homicides in Baltimore thus far in 2015, putting the city on track for a record-setting year. 43 of these occurred in May in the aftermath of Freddie Gray's death, more than double the average number of homicides recorded in May between 2009-2014 and the most since 1971, when…

by Kathleen Goodwin Following the murders of nine members of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston by 21 year old Dylann Roof, many have noted the significance of Roof's being born in 1994. Despite growing up in “post-racial” America, in an allegedly “colorblind” generation, Roof is a white supremacist who adopted the symbols…

by Kathleen Goodwin I'm currently in the process of moving away from New York City and while I've only lived here for two quick years, now seems as good a time as any for some reflection. Apparently since Joan Didion wrote a piece in The Saturday Evening Post in 1967 about her departure from the…

by Kathleen Goodwin The extent of my identification with my Armenian heritage was once dyeing Easter eggs a mottled maroon the traditional Armenian way (with onion skins) with my Armenian grandmother. In high school when learning about the systematic eradication of Armenians during World War I, I didn't feel any sense of personal injustice. By…

by Kathleen Goodwin At the end of February, Laura Kipnis, a professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, authored a piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” which explores the ban some schools have placed on sexual relationships between students and professors and how it relates to the…

by Kathleen Goodwin I recently read the surgeon and public health researcher Atul Gawande's latest book, “Being Mortal” in which he writes about end-of-life care in the American healthcare system, which has developed into a series of increasingly radical attempts to postpone death, often at the expense of the comfort of patients during their remaining…

by Kathleen Goodwin In the past few weeks I have heard and read a number of impassioned responses to Clint Eastwood's “American Sniper”, a film based on the memoir of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL with the highest number of confirmed sniper kills in U.S. history. A common assertion that amateur and professional reviewers are…

by Kathleen Goodwin Exaggerated concern about what one eats is predominantly an obsession of the privileged—usually the white, wealthy, and educated. Having the luxury of time to contemplate the calories in your food or the distance it traveled from field to supermarket aisle; and the money to purchase costlier foods that were produced without the…

by Kathleen Goodwin I struggle to organize my thoughts when it comes to the discourse on race in the United States as catalytic events are playing out in real time each day. I am also struggling to keep up with the tidal wave of articles, tweets, statuses, and photos that my social networks are posting…

by Kathleen Goodwin Currently, Ebola hysteria in the United States is at a low simmer compared to the fever pitch of a few weeks prior. In the lull following the peak of the hysteria as Americans in Dallas and New York City tested positive for the virus, a number of activists, physicians, and journalists have…

by Kathleen Goodwin In recent months a spotlight, or rather a searchlight, has been shone on college campuses throughout the United States as both administrators and state and federal governments have finally been goaded into taking action to address the problem of campus sexual assault in a critical manner. This past May the White House…

by Kathleen Goodwin Few students of colonial history can deny the power of spoken and written language to subject and subdue a population. Zia Haider Rahman's “dazzling debut” of a novel, “In the Light of What We Know”, contrasts two South Asian characters who attended Oxford together as undergrads—a privileged Pakistani narrator who becomes an…

by Kathleen Goodwin If you haven't visited ladypockets.com, it's worth it for a laugh. In the words of creator, Katherine Fritz, “instead of writing the great American Novel, I made a fake fashion + lifestyle blog where I tell you where to buy Ruth Bader Ginsberg's earrings.” Gems include a photo of Christine Lagarde gesturing…

by Kathleen Goodwin In the spring of 2012, I spent four weeks in Delhi conducting interviews for my senior thesis, an analysis of the systematic massacre of 3,000 members of the Delhi Sikh community in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination by two Sikh members of her own security detail in 1984. While I had…

by Kathleen Goodwin There are many bitter and hopeless thoughts that have plagued me since the night that Wendy Chang took her own life in her Harvard dorm room in April 2012, just 34 days before she would have graduated. However, it wasn't until this past January, when Madison Holleran, a freshman at the University…

by Kathleen Goodwin Men worldwide may have been startled to hear a ticking as their biological clocks sputtered into existence this week. A study of Swedish children born over a nearly 30 year period revealed there are negative health outcomes for those born to older fathers. In a paper published in JAMA Psychiatry this past…

by Kathleen Goodwin It goes without saying, yet, we keep saying it anyways, that the United States government has had its share of problems in recent months. From the federal shutdown to the Affordable Care Act fiasco, it hasn't been a period to build confidence or pride in the American government. Still, many Americans would…