Bard College, a small liberal arts college in the Hudson Valley and academic home of WRM, is trying a singularly ambitious new plan for college admissions. Rather than relying on high school GPAs and SAT scores, future applicants will have the option of completing four research papers, 2,500 words long, on topics ranging from 17th-century […]

If any Via Meadia readers are sitting on piles of cash, here’s a chance to do something important: save the City Opera of New York. Founded seventy years ago and once known as “the people’s opera” for its relatively cheap ticket prices and alternative repertoire, the City Opera is now sadly headed for the chopping […]

With the  Westgate Mall in Kenya still full of wreckage from the recent attacks, 50 college students were murdered in their beds by Boko Haram in Nigeria early Sunday morning. The AP reports: Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture told The Associated Press that there were no security forces protecting the […]

Adam Garfinkle has a few choice things to say about the Obama administration’s recent negotiating “successes”: For reasons both political and delusional, the Obama Administration feels great these days both on account of the U.S.-Russia chemical weapons deal over Syria that eventuated in UNSCR 2118, and on account of its “opening” to Iran. The broad […]

No city has embraced the school choice movement more than New Orleans. Yet over the past few weeks, the Wall Street Journal has been taking a close look at how the idea is working out, and the results have been decidedly mixed.The biggest problem is that there simply aren’t enough high-quality schools to go around. The […]

Say you’ve just finished building a house out of straw, but after stepping back to admire your work, you realize it’s listing dangerously to one side, ready to collapse. Do you look at the materials you used and acknowledge that maybe you’ve made a mistake? Not if you’re China. No, if you’re China, your solution […]

A wave of car bombs planted in predominately Shia Muslim neighborhoods throughout Baghdad killed at least 47 people today and injured dozens more. The BBC has the bloody details: Monday’s blasts struck during Baghdad’s morning rush hour, with reports of 13 bombs, most of them in Shia neighbourhoods.Groups of labourers gathering ahead of the working […]

A devastating attack on a historic marketplace in Peshawar caps a particularly deadly week for Pakistan, even by its own standards. After a double suicide bombing at a Christian church killed 83 people last Sunday, a bus bombing killed 21 government officials on Friday, and yesterday at least 40 people were killed as a bomb […]

Textiles, the cutting edge industry of the 19th century, are making a surprising comeback in the 21st-century US. The New York Times profiles the unexpected economic twist, noting that manufacturers are becoming more concerned with safety and quality workmanship than with rock-bottom wages—two areas where America enjoys an advantage over countries like China.The industry, however, still […]

Another day, another dreary episode in Washington’s shutdown/debt limit soap opera, reports CNN: In a move that makes a shutdown appear very likely, House Republicans approved a spending plan early Sunday morning that would delay Obamacare for a year and repeal its tax on medical devices.The temporary budget resolution now goes back to the Senate, where Democrats […]