Culture

By Simon Chadwick, SKEMA Business School | – (The Conversation) – Boxing purists may argue over the sporting value of a fight between a reality TV star and a former YouTube prankster. But the commercial value of the massively hyped event in February 2023 was clear for both the contestants (Tommy Fury and Jake Paul […]

Far Right

Saudi-owned LIV Golf “Sportswashes” Rights Abuses

Human Rights Watch

By Leila Saad, Research Assistant | – ( Human Rights Watch ) – Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is attempting to “sportswash” the country’s egregious record of human rights violations through a new global golf tournament that begins later this month. The Saudi-funded LIV Golf’s 2023 tournament will kick off on February 24 in Mexico […]

Health

Football’s One to the Heart: How Safe is the Superbowl for Players?

Tomdispatch

By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The echoes still linger from that national sigh of relief last month when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, slammed into cardiac arrest during a game on January 2nd, was declared out of danger. It was a justified sigh. A vibrant young life had been spared. But […]

Books

Plagues and Painting with Words: Glimpses of Orhan Pamuk’s Writing Process

Erdag Goknar

By Erdağ Göknar | – ( LA Review of Books) – DURING THE LONG summer days in Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk devotes himself to intensive writing on Büyükada, an island in the Sea of Marmara, and in the evenings, he meets with visitors. Last August, Pamuk and I had dinner there and discussed everything from politics […]

Dissent

Iranian Protesters turn to TikTok to get their Message past government Censors

The Conversation

By Whitney Shylee May, The University of Texas at Austin | – Images of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini on Sept. 16, 2022, in Iran and reports of the government’s brutal crackdown have circulated widely on social media. This flow of information comes despite efforts by the Iranian regime […]

Antisemitism

Teaching the Holocaust through Literature: four books to help Young People gain deeper Understanding

The Conversation

By Christine Berberich, University of Portsmouth | – A survey commissioned in 2019 revealed the shocking result that over half of Britons did not know that at least six millions Jews had been murdered during the Holocaust. This result was all the more surprising given the fact that the Holocaust, as a topic, has been […]

Comic Books

100 years of Stan Lee: how the Comic Book King challenged Prejudice

The Conversation

By Alex Fitch, University of Brighton | – December 28 2022 marks 100 years since the birth of the world’s most famous comic book writer: the late Stan Lee. The 1960s were Stan Lee’s most astonishing decade, during which he came up with ideas and scripts for the first appearances of such heroes as the […]

Arab World

Soccer Champion Lionel Messi’s Black Cloak: a brief History of the Honorary Bisht

The Conversation

By Pardis Mahdavi, The University of Montana | – Shortly before Lionel Messi took to the stage to lift up the World Cup trophy, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani put a black cloak, called a “bisht,” over the Argentinian soccer star’s shoulders. Images of Messi wrapped in black fabric, which might have […]

Authoritarianism

Iranian State Arrests Popular Actress Taraneh Alidoosti, star of Academy-Award-Winning Film, for Protesting Executions

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iranian authorities arrested renowned actress Taraneh Alidoosti, 38, on Saturday for an Instagram post in which she denounced the execution last week of the first of this fall’s protesters to be put to death by the Iranian government. Her instagram account, which had 8 million followers, has been suspended. She […]