Author Archives: Hugh Baran

Perhaps it is overly dramatic to say that this year’s presidential election is nothing less than the fight for our future—we’ve been told so about every election in the past. But now the truth of the statement is inescapable. With an economy in turmoil and on the brink of total disaster, it falls to us »

On Monday, the New Haven Board of Education terminated its food-service contract with the notorious firm Aramark and decided instead to run all food services in-house. Parents, workers, teachers and public-school students have fiercely criticized the company for putting profits before kids by serving poor-quality food and cultivating bad labor-management relations. There is still much »

By now we’ve all heard that the Bush administration approved torture of detainees during the war on terror. But the full circumstances of its approval were not public until last Wednesday, when ABC News first reported on the meetings of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee chaired by Condoleezza Rice in 2002. In these meetings, »

Barack Obama and John McCain are running lines for a battle of narratives in the next months of this presidential election. As Daniel Nichanian pointed out on this page Tuesday, both Obama and McCain are running similar kinds of campaigns based on symbols, images and personal stories. Nichanian observed how McCain’s first general election ad »

While it seems that the nation’s leaders are still hesitant to use words like “recession,” the grim reality is that they may need to adopt a new word altogether — depression. Several weeks ago, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described what he termed a growing “crisis of faith” in the economy as woes that »

Though it only ended a week ago, the writers’ strike probably now feels like ancient history. Everyone is so wrapped up in the presidential primaries that even this week’s monumental election in Pakistan seemed like a miniscule event. As students in a city that remains a regular site of labor struggle, largely centered around this »

There’s a growing sense among many Democrats, regardless of whom they voted for Tuesday, that John McCain will be incredibly tough to beat in the general election. Admittedly, some shrug him off, pointing to the country’s overwhelming opposition to Bush and the war in Iraq as definite signs pointing to the impossibility of a Republican »

While answering my e-mail Friday evening, I paused to read President Levin’s statement in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. This seemingly innocuous note reminded me yet again of how numerous social actors in the post-civil rights era have seized on the legacy of King in pursuit of their own objectives, regardless of how they »

We and other members of the Coalition for Campus Unity were deeply upset to learn last week of the treatment of Local 34 member Bernard Rogers — a Yale employee for the past 26 years — by his supervisors and co-workers at Mudd Library. As reported in the News last week by Lea Yu, Mr. »

In the past year, the University’s plans of new residential colleges in Dixwell have seemed to be closer to fruition than ever before, and the Shartenberg development is moving full steam ahead — making clear that we have not seen the end of new development initiatives in our city. More development can, undoubtedly, bring great »

The arrival of Beverly Tatum, a nationally recognized expert on race and author of “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” to give the freshman address this past Sunday, and the conversations that took place following her talk, signal the start of what we feel to be a long-overdue discussion of »

After a year of divisiveness among Ward 1 Democrats, we ran for Ward 1 Democratic Committee co-chair with the hope of reforming the aldermanic selection and nomination process. Currently, a committee of 40 to 50 Democrats selected by the ward co-chairs votes on which aldermanic candidate receives the party’s endorsement in the primary and general »