The New Yorker
The French Obsession with National Suicide, The New Yorker, Dec. 11, 2014
There are few things the French find more annoying than what they call “French bashing”—a term they use in English, despite their insistence on finding French equivalents for foreign words. When Jean Tirole was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Prime Minister Manuel Valls sent out a tweet of congratulations to “another Frenchman to…
Continue readingA BOMBSHELL DOCUMENT AT THE VATICAN SYNOD, New Yorker, October 13, 2014
Since Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, a little more than a year and a half ago, the Argentine has radically changed the tone and the mood surrounding the Catholic Church. But the question remained: How would he handle the difficult doctrinal issues of sexuality and family life that have divided the Catholic world? We are…
Continue readingIN NEW YORK, RENZI MANIA OR RENZI REMORSE?, New Yorker, September 27, 2014
Matteo Renzi, the Prime Minister of Italy, quite self-consciously made Silicon Valley the first stop of his first official American visit: “not New York, not Washington, not Boston,” Renzi pointed out, somewhat undiplomatically, to his audience at the Council on Foreign Relations, in New York, a decidedly more staid group than the ones that he…
Continue readingCAN THE FRENCH TALK ABOUT RACE?, New Yorker, July 11, 2014
Quietly, the French Ministry of Higher Education last month signed off on implementing a law that had been passed nearly a year earlier but had been gathering dust within the bureaucracy. Many in the ministry had hoped that it would die a quiet and unnoticed death. Following a model developed in Texas and California, the…
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