William Easterly reports on an important archaeological discovery this morning; the IMF’s report on economic conditions in Judea almost 2000 years ago.  After meeting with Governor Pontius Pilate and other members of the government, the IMF team praised Judea’s progress in promoting democracy and the rule of law despite some recent “minor political disturbances involving […]

Does President Obama have a Jewish problem? Despite the best efforts of his Republican challengers to portray the president as too soft on Iran and too hard on Israel, a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute suggests support for Obama among American Jews is as strong as ever. The poll also found that Israel was […]

Here at Via Meadia we have been closely following the slow and sometimes painful process of change in American higher education. Yet it’s worth keeping in mind that, despite all the turmoil, American schools remain the envy of the world, and America’s soft-power lure is still strong, especially in China. As the FT reports, the […]

In the beginning, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah condemned the Syrian uprising. Then, when things started getting violent, he tried to help moderate a ceasefire between government and rebel forces. Now, ever so subtly, he is hedging his bets, voicing tentative and vague support for the Syrian rebels, careful not to antagonize his second-greatest patron. But is […]

The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is fraught in the best of times, but we may be approaching a new low. Pakistani politicians of all stripes have united in denouncing the $10 million dollar U.S. bounty on Hafiz Saeed, the man behind the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, who is currently living openly in Pakistan. Pakistan’s refusal to cooperate […]

Last weekend we predicted a sea of trouble for the democracy quangos—quasi-NGOs that support democracy in foreign countries and receive a significant portion of their funding from the federal government. Understandably, many foreign governments, particularly those not favorably disposed to American-style democracy, have taken umbrage at these groups’ close ties with domestic opposition, characterizing them […]

If the great recession has spelled doom for traditional employment sectors like manufacturing and construction, that doesn’t mean that new jobs across the board are nowhere to be found. Via Meadia has looked into new growth in many unconventional job fields; today the New York Times profiles another: veterinary medicine: Dr. Suter, at North Carolina […]

Last week Via Meadia took up a question that it seems high time to mull over: What will Afghanistan look like when America leaves?Extending this question beyond Afghanistan to all of Greater Central Asia, Rajan Menon has taken a crack at an answer in The American Interest. The results are far from heartening. A weak Afghan regime with […]

Will America’s next great university be online? That’s the ambitious aim of the Minerva Project, an education startup/university that just received $25 million in seed funding and has already snared former Harvard President Larry Summers to chair its advisory board. Minerva’s founder, Ben Nelson, says that “by creating an educational experience that is built from […]

Since the beginning of the recession in 2007, it has become a fashionable among intellectuals to predict a future of slow growth and gradual economic decline in America. Yet America has a way of confounding the predictions of the intellectuals, and there are many things going its way which may allow standards of living to […]