‘Dubai’s rise represents a dramatic rewriting’
‘I went to Dubai, and caught a glimpse of the future’
Lydia Polgreen at The New York Times
Western leaders “assume that the best and brightest people from poorer countries will always want to build their lives in the West,” says Lydia Polgreen. But Dubai has “many ambitious people from across the global south who might once have set their sights on a career and life in the West.” Dubai is “collapsing the distinction, never very meaningful in the first place, between migrant and expat in fascinating ways.” Dubai “poses serious challenges to our ideas about citizenship.”
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‘When free speech champion Elon Musk threatens speech, we should take it seriously’
David Keating at USA Today
Elon Musk is “free to passionately decry what he views as sloppy journalism or unethical behavior by CBS News,” but it’s “different when the person urging jail for ideological opponents can be viewed as potentially having the power to trigger an investigation or prosecution,” says David Keating. Musk has “highly influential access to the sitting president,” and “as such, remarks like his could intimidate not just journalists but any critic.” Musk “needs to choose his words more carefully.”
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‘Some teachers are underpaid’
Vivek Ramaswamy at The Wall Street Journal
The “failure of our education system puts at risk the survival of our country in a competitive global economy,” and “policymakers in both parties deserve blame for this bleak reality,” says Vivek Ramaswamy. Both political parties have “ignored a key underlying cause of the educational achievement crisis: Compensation for public school teachers rewards mediocrity over merit.” The “solution is to tie teacher pay directly to students’ learning outcomes, rather than seniority or credentials.”
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‘Street protests aren’t enough to transform Serbia’
Aleks Eror at Foreign Policy
Serbian protesters’ “current focus on state corruption has appealed to a broader cross-section of society — in part because it is a tangible issue and can’t be dismissed as a bourgeois concern,” says Aleks Eror. The “ruling party’s usual methods — bullying its opponents into submission through smears and character assassinations carried out by tabloid media — aren’t well suited to this situation.” But “with time, the movement’s lack of hierarchy could also end up being its fatal flaw.”
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