If you were designing the prison system from scratch, how would you set up its educational function? Would you emphasise skills that are in demand in the employment market? Social skills like...

For as long as there has been authority, there’s probably been resistance to it. Resistance can take many forms, from quiet disengagement to violent conflict. Some of these acts of resistance are...

Increased longevity — thanks largely to improvements in health care and medical technology — is devoutly to be wished for, but in a sense it only puts off the inevitable: we all die, and some of...

Although it was foreshadowed by other events, the dramatic collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 seemed to mark a turning-point in the fortunes of the developed Western economies. Since then an...

If Hannah Arendt—the great political theorist, critic of totalitarianism, and sometime lover of Martin Heidegger—had not died from a heart attack on 4th December 1975, today would have been her...

To some ears, the word ‘character’ no doubt still evokes cold showers and a stiff upper lip. But these familiar associations are both too old-fashioned and not old-fashioned enough. Not...

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, took the stage last week to introduce two of what he described as the museum’s “new acquisitions.” The first, a collection of paintings by...

What would you include in a citizen’s guide to justice?  An outline of citizens’ legal rights?  Details of the legal aid system? Or a list of the names of all the teenagers murdered in 2009 and...

Ulrike Al-Khamis, Sharjah Museum

Barbara Ehrenreich, author and political activist