Timothy Snyder on Modern Tyranny

Modern tyranny can change things quickly by making us react slowly. You have an enormous amount of influence in the first weeks and months. If you spend that time saying, “This is not that big a deal,” or “The institutions will protect us,” or “This can’t happen here” or “I’m going to wait for someone to tell me what to do,” then it’s all over.

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Opinion | The Hidden Costs of School Vouchers

How should Jewish schools weigh the need for autonomy against the lure of state subsidies? Some day schools, mostly non-Orthodox and in smaller Jewish communities, are already happily educating many children who do not identify as Jewish. Hebrew-language charter schools in cities like New York and Los Angeles straddle the boundary between public school and day school, with majority non-Jewish student bodies and a focus on language and culture rather than religion.

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Is Free Speech Under Fire on Campus?

Over the past few months, a series of student protests has erupted across the United States on campuses such as Amherst, Dartmouth, Ithaca, the University of Missouri and Yale. While the specific spark of each protest has differed, their substance has been of like mind: Students are contending that their administrations have neglected an obligation to address bigotry, discrimination and intolerance, and specifically racism.

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Opinion | Who’s Afraid of Al Jazeera?

By Amy E. Schwartz An American offshoot of the Qatari network makes some watchdogs nervous. Media observers buzzed with consternation last August when Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned network that played such a dramatic role broadcasting the Arab Spring, bought Al Gore’s cable network, Current TV, and launched Al Jazeera America. It hired seasoned American journalists, some of them Jewish, and promised to cover America for America. Dark predictions flew. Would Al Jazeera America fulfill the fears of Cliff Kincaid of the watchdog group Accuracy in Media, who in 2011 called for a congressional investigation into whether Al Jazeera English—the international service then available mostly on the Internet—was “playing a role” in homegrown American terror plots? Months later, fears continue to bubble. For many, it rankles that the network broadcasts some programs from prestigious rented studio space in Washington’s...

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