ILF POST

By Harlan Cleveland Americans, the progeny of immigrants, are arguing once again about immigration policy. The outcome is foreordained: an exercise in contrived ambiguity.On one side of the debate, some political leaders — and the uncounted millions they may represent — want to stop illegal workers from entering the United States. They also [...]

By Charles Lindblom In a world more sane than ours and with customs permitting research and teaching less hobbled than ours, I believe that the fundamental practice that establishes a market system would be perceived as immoral, its practical effects denounced as inhumane and on other counts intolerable. The practice is, in brief: quid pro [...]

By Jane Poynter
My experience living for two years sealed inside Biosphere 2 was one of being a cog in a biospheric engine. Inside our three-acre world, we could have razed our miniature rainforest, but it was patently obvious that we needed those plants for the oxygen and clean air we breathed. We watched on [...]

By Douglass Carmichael To start, a quote “According to Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution increased by only about 1 percent per year between 1972 and 2001 whilst over the same period that at the 99th percentile rose [...]

By Harlan Cleveland The “war on terrorism” isn’t going well. There are plenty of things wrong — timing, tactics, competence, leadership. But one of the main troubles, simple yet fundamental, is its name.
Terrorism is not a doctrine, like Communism or Fascism” or “containment,” which led to creating the NATO alliance to frustrate Soviet ambitions. [...]

By Mary Catherine Bateson Does schooling in our society work against lifelong learning? Several years ago I had the pleasure of teaching a series of graduate seminars at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I soon noticed that conversations about learning tended to slip over into conversations about education and from there into conversations about [...]

By Gloria Feldt Think back with me to September 1995, to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Thrilling and ambitious goals were set for improving the lives of women, and that improves the lives of their families, their communities, and the world.
The official conference was in Beijing, but the much larger [...]

By Daniel Yankelovich

Here are a few impressions from my recent trip to Qatar to attend the U.S.- Islamic World Forum. (Attendees were two-thirds Muslims, primarily from Arab countries and about one-third Americans). The Muslim participants were preoccupied with the Hamas victory in Palestine, and felt almost universally that the United States should not seek [...]

By Michael Crichton If loss of biodiversity is important, then loss of intellectual diversity in the marketplace of ideas is important for all the same reasons. For a healthy and vigorous intellectual life, we are dependent on new ideas, contrary viewpoints, and a constant challenge to conventional wisdom. Without them we risk ossification both [...]

By Charles Lindblom As I see it, in bars and living rooms no less than in think tanks, a continuing great debate on economic globalization is enriching what we know about corporations, governments, and the market system in their relations with each other. If among the 200 or so nations of the world, almost [...]

By Jane Poynter I have been wondering lately why the majority of Americans behave as if they don’t care about the environment. What does it say about us that so many Americans still drive around in gigantic SUVs (the epitome of what environmentalists consider Americans’ anti-environmental, or at least apathetic, attitude towards the environment)? Are [...]

By Douglass Carmichael. In the coming weeks I’ll explore the idea that there exists a political program that 80% of the US population would vote for. It is an issue of a tone and approach more than specifics. Though specific s count.. People want realistic hope, pragmatism and some serious working to [...]

By Gloria Feldt The biggest news about the sweeping new South Dakota law that will ban all abortions except to save the woman’s life–no exceptions to preserve her health or for rape or incest–is that this news story has been repeated over and over for more than a generation. But this time [...]

By Jane Alexander Cultural diplomacy, once a main arm of politics abroad, is flagging; it is almost dead in fact. If ever we needed to know about the people of Islam and the citizens of Islam needed to know about the American people the time is now. The last conference hosted by President Bill Clinton [...]

By Charles Lindblom As I see it, in bars and living rooms no less than in think tanks, a continuing great debate on economic globalization is enriching what we know about corporations, governments, and the market system in their relations with each other. If among the 200 or so nations of the world, almost [...]

By Harlan Cleveland The last time I was in India, fifteen months ago, I had a chance to meet and listen to its President, a nuclear scientist who talked about rural poverty, and its Prime Minister, an economist who as Finance Minister in the early 1990s got India moving toward its present [...]

By Mary Catherine Bateson At this season of the year, as the days grow longer and spring approaches, households all over the country are awaiting news about college admissions and financial aid. At the same time our philosophy of education is being tested in debates about the federal budget for 2007 and [...]