As the deadly exchanges of rocket fire and airstrikes between Israel and Hamas in Gaza entered their second week Monday, the White House issued a statement in which for the first time President Joe Biden expressed his support for a “cease-fire” in the hostilities.
But Mr. Biden also “reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate attacks.” That’s according to a readout of a presidential call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Why We Wrote This
The eruption of Israeli-Palestinian violence is raising pressure on the U.S. to return to a traditional role in that conflict – that of powerful mediator. What does the goal of “honest broker” mean today?
While the equality of men and women was a founding principle of the European Union, the continent’s gender pay gap has long been stuck at 14%.
This year, a spate of powerful new efforts by a number of member states to close the gender pay gap has culminated in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal for sweeping new legislation that would compel companies throughout Europe to share salary data broken down by gender and prohibit them from asking job applicants their salary history.
Why We Wrote This
Equal pay for equal work may become a reality in Europe, as the European Union’s new female leader takes advantage of a sea change in societal and corporate thinking about gender equality to realize a long unfulfilled goal.
In January, the Air Force changed grooming standards for female troops to allow ponytails and braids rather than buns alone. The Army followed suit a few months later, announcing that it is also eliminating from policy guidance words like “eccentric” and “faddish,” which often targeted women of color.
“This really goes back to a larger thing – diversity and inclusion,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston said. “Are these microaggressions, those things that we were saying that maybe we didn’t know were offensive? Maybe we need to be aware of that.”
Why We Wrote This
What may seem like a superficial change in grooming standards signals a sea change in attitudes about military strength.
by Annette Gordon-Reed
Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed renders a perfectly quilted work of history seen through the eyes of an African American family in Texas. It follows the seldom-shared stories of descendants of enslaved Black people from the 1820s to their emancipation in Galveston on June 19, 1865.
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by Suzanne Simard
Suzanne Simard is a leading forest ecologist and a pioneer in the field of plant communication. She writes that trees are complicated, interdependent social organisms connected to one another through underground networks. This book is not just about the science, but about a deeply personal quest to understand one of the most dominant classes of species on Earth.