Amanda Gorman’s name is on everyone’s lips. In lush yet careful language, her young voice delivered age-old yet timely wisdom at President Biden’s inauguration. As the poet Elizabeth Alexander said the next day on WNYC radio, Gorman reminded us that people need poetry. The late great poet Audre Lorde made the same point years ago in a famous essay titled “Poetry is Not a Luxury.”
The Trump Presidency Is Now History. So How Will It Rank?
As scholars consider the legacy of Donald J. Trump, it appears that even the woefully inadequate James Buchanan has some serious competition.
Former President Donald J. Trump leaving the White House on Wednesday.Credit.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Jan. 23, 2021
In the race to the bottom for the title of worst American president, the same few sorry names appear at the end of almost every list, jockeying for last place. There’s Andrew Johnson, whose abysmal behavior during Reconstruction led to the first presidential impeachment. There’s Warren G. Harding, responsible for the Teapot Dome scandal. There’s hapless, hated Franklin Pierce; doomed, dead-after-32-days William Henry Harrison; and inevitably, James Buchanan, often considered worst of all because of how badly he bungled the lead-up to the Civil War.
Facebook asks its new oversight board to rule on banning Trump
More than three years after the idea was first floated by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s “oversight board” started hearing its first cases last month. Whatever the outcomes, those cases have been overshadowed by an announcement on Thursday that Facebook has sought the right to permanently banish Donald Trump. An initial ban had gone into effect on January 7, after a mob stormed the Capitol building. “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
What Zoom Does to Campus Conflicts Over Israel and Free Speech
As battles over Israel and the Palestinian territories have migrated online, technology has scrambled the debate.
Clashes erupted in 2018 at a student celebration of Israel in Washington Square Park in Manhattan.Credit.Mack DeGeurin
Published Jan. 22, 2021Updated Feb. 10, 2021
Leila Khaled is a two-time hijacker, a member of a Palestinian group on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. So it came as a shock to Javier Cohen, a senior at New York University, to find her speaking on an N.Y.U. webinar last semester.
In the video, Ms. Khaled calls Israel an “apartheid state” practicing terrorism against Palestinians and vows to pursue “all means of struggle, including armed struggle” against it.