Washingtonians Remember Kennedy At Vigil Wednesday Night

Whatever wrong the late Sen. Ted Kennedy had done earlier in his life, George Mason University professors Hugh Gusterson and Allison Macfarlane are satisfied the youngest of the Kennedy brothers subsequently redeemed himself in the Senate. “He might have been flawed, but he was also passionate and righteous,” Gusterson said.

He was probably echoing the views of the 150-strong crowd who had gathered at the heart of Washington D.C in a hastily arranged candlelight vigil for the late Senator Wednesday evening. For an hour or so, the north side of the Dupont Circle fountain turned into a makeshift memorial for the late senator from Massachusetts.

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Tempering Dreams With Harsh Reality

Photo: Flickr User Yan Arief

TANKING economy, check; struggling newspaper industry, check; few opportunities for fresh young talent, check.

So why would any fresh graduate choose to quadruple his student debt by going straight into graduate journalism school, only to enter an industry that is seemingly devoid of opportunities?

Well, I did. My friends thought I was insane, but I could not imagine doing anything else. I guess I also wanted to attend Columbia Journalism School because the idea of hazarding a calculated risk appealed to me.

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Economic Logic Alone Does Not Make a “Home”

Photo: Flickr User besar bear

What makes a country a home? Is it emotional ties or pure economic self-interest?

Linda Lim posed this question in a Straits Times article published June 19 and it has lingered in my mind ever since, particularly at the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum held Aug. 31 at the NUS Theatrette.

Singapore’s manpower minister, Ng Eng Hen was the minister in attendance as he suggested how the Singapore graduate can “stand tall in a shrinking world”. He talked about the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the Singapore graduate and suggested we have to improve if we were to take advantage of future opportunities in an increasingly globalised world.

It all sounded so familiar. Ng cached his argument in an unmistakable economic paradigm that has come to characterize the PAP government. But should the only logic that prevails on most occasions be economic in a home? While it is important to embrace this global human flow, is Singapore embracing this at the risk of alienating Singaporeans?

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Engagement: The More, The Merrier

It is difficult to resist drawing comparisons when two apparently non-official “rescue” missions were made in the last fortnight alone by prominent U.S. political personalities. That they were to two of the world’s most closed countries — North Korea and Burma — has invited a flurry of perspectives on how the Obama adminstration should conduct themselves in its foreign policy.

Foreign Policy’s David Roftkopf advocates caution. He says:

Webb says he was not an official emissary of the administration. Bill Clinton said the same thing. Clearly, in both instances this particular bit of diplomatic kabuki theater is transparent to all. Webb is the regional subcommittee chair on a critical Senate subcommittee, he is close to the administration, was briefed by them before his trip and promises to brief them on his return. At no time did they renounce the trip and he traveled on a U.S. government plane. His visit was official and the credit for the release of Yettaw and the potential negative consequences of the mission must accrue to the president and his team.

Personally, I think making engagement a centerpiece of a new U.S. foreign policy is a major positive development for which the administration deserves great credit. But as with any such new initiative, we need to be careful about how we approach it prior to getting all the bugs worked out. The Webb mission, even with is success in terms of securing the release of Mr. Yettaw, winning a session with Suu Kyi and engaging in a rare exchange with the leader of the regime, raises important concerns that need to be addressed if the new policy is to work to our best advantage in the future.

Key to such caution will be how much the U.S. first engages with countries that wield more influence in both countries. Diplomatic pressure cannot come from America alone, it has to be multilateral and come from other countries. China figures centrally in both cases, but more so for North Korea. The Burma case is a little harder to crack because its neighbors reportedly have business interests in the country that predate the military regime in power. Economic sanctions therefore become ineffective.

Instead, the Obama administration could do better to cajole/entice Burma’s ASEAN neighbors, India and China, to apply more sustained pressure on the military junta to accede to international norms. While ASEAN member countries maintain an official non-interference stance, international outrage and the Southeast Asian regional grouping’s belated introduction of a Human Rights Mechanism in 2007 have combined to make that untenable. This is since any failure to condemn Burma’s ridiculous treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi would affect ASEAN’s credibility.

A commitment to engagement is a great starting point, but the Obama administration could expand their notion of “engagement” to take on a more pluralistic approach to advance its foreign policy agenda.

[This first appeared on TheAtlantic.com's Politics Channel.]

Journalism’s Problem Isn’t Gawker. It’s Advertising.

Washington Post’s Ian Shapira fired the latest salvo in the ongoing debate about paid media content with his thoughtful “rant” over the weekend about Gawker “stealing” his story. But he raised the bar by invoking legal considerations, wondering aloud if Gawker’s (mis)use of his work amounted to copyright infringement.

And now, more believe he, along with many other “conventional” media outlets, may have a case. Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab has stats possibly backing Shapira’s argument. So should the central issue of what constitutes “fair use” determine how things will pan out? It’s not exactly prudent when most debates on that leads down a slippery slope. Besides, technologists have insisted moves made by The Associated Press last week to “protect” its content are backward and will be bad for business in the long run.

But at the end of the day, it is the bottom line that drives business decisions. People such as Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen may eventually be right about the intellectual architecture of the mediascape, but the details of how we actually get there are what matter most. This is really about advertising revenue.

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Deciphering the Politics of Charter Schools

My friends at the Columbia Journalism School,who stayed on after graduation in May to work on this year’s News 21 project on charter schools in America, are finishing up their reporting from all over America. And the things they found are somewhat disconcerting and gladsome at the same time.

This story, by Maura Walz, documents how minority ethnic groups are using the charter school system to create schools, catering to their cultural norms. Walz’s story profiles a predominantly Arab-American school in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota.

The concern is that such segmentation in schools could potentially threaten the fabric of American society because children aren’t schooled in the ways of engaging other cultures. But there is evidence of higher academic achievement by kids from lower-income homes in such schools.

But before anybody judge the merits or demerits of such “ethnic enclaves” among charter schools, it would be useful to consider how they emerged as a response to how the American public school system has failed to meet the needs of minority groups. This relates to bigger questions on the assimilation of immigrants into American society. In particular, how many immigrant parents still view their kids being American and retaining their ethnic identities and cultures as two mutual exclusive entities.

Just as the fiasco surrounding the arrest of Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his own home in Cambridge, Mass. suggests a post-racial America is a mere pipe dream, that people still see the need for ethnic-based charter schools shows that learning how to create more space for people to retain their cultures without being seen as compromising their “American-ness”, is a continuous process that needs to be accelerated.

A Glimpse of the Little Red Dot

Singapore Lights Timelapse from Weehan Yeo on Vimeo.

This beautiful visual multimedia collage of the Singapore landscape was found via @mrbrown/mrbrown.com.