Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

At the opening of Yale’s third strike in as many years, this community is right to wonder how it is that we find ourselves at this point — and where we go from here. Today it’s key to remember which camp on this campus prefers negotiations to strikes and which prefers strikes to negotiations. GESO »

Like Jonathan Menitove, I’d like nothing more come November 2006 than to send Rick Santorum packing (“Left’s winning strategy: swing (a bit) to the right,” 3/30). From his advocacy of legislative gay-bashing as “homeland security” to his stealth attempt this month to roll back the 40-hour work week, the third-most powerful Senate Republican represents the »

This week, President Bush presented Congress and the American people with a budget with steep cuts in job training, affordable housing and Medicare. It’s a budget that calls on poor kids to do without health class, poor families to do with heating and poor communities to do without wastewater treatment plants. Not everyone, however, is »

Last night, the members of Local 34 met to commemorate two decades since winning their first contract with Yale. After a string of failed attempts, Local 34 gained recognition in 1984 as one of the first clerical and technical workers’ unions at a private university. And after a hard-fought ten-week strike that belied University Secretary »

Last semester, I had the chance to ask President Levin to explain the “philosophy of co-investment” he often references when confronted by internal and external pressure for meaningful financial aid reform. I was disappointed to hear Levin reiterate his argument that the burden of work and debt that Yale currently imposes on students and families »

The first I heard of Barack Obama was at a conference this spring when I asked the president of the League of Conservation Voters why the environmental poster children seem to be wealthy liberals from San Francisco rather than kids in Harlem growing up with asthma. Why does a movement fighting an evil whose immediate »

Two weeks ago, feeling the heat from mobilization by community members, New Haven’s City Plan Commission denied a rubber stamp to a Yale-New Haven Hospital project for the first time in recent memory. Sharing his view of hospital critics who had turned out with concerns about the its development program, hospital spokesman Vin Petrini told »

On Saturday, Military Intelligence Specialist Armin Cruz testified that he “ordered three naked prisoners to crawl along a concrete floor, handcuffed them and stepped on at least one of them,” according to the Associated Press. His conviction represents the second sentencing — the first of intelligence personnel — in connection with the torture of Iraqi »

While urging Floridians to register to vote at supermarkets, at homeless shelters and at parks the past few months, I got all kinds of responses — from enthusiastic appreciation to angry rejection to studied but yielding skepticism. But no one I encountered was as passionate in their validation or condemnation of the work I was »

Two weeks ago, several friends and I had the chance to attend a dinner discussion at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life on Jewish values and business ethics with Marvin Lender, founder of Lender’s Bagels and chairman of Yale-New Haven Hospital. Given the contrast between Lender’s Bagels’ reputation for decent labor relations and the ongoing »

Ralph Nader once wrote, “Your greatest teacher is your last mistake.” These words seemed strangely appropriate Sunday as Nader, who four Novembers ago bucked the advice of his advisors and finished his campaign in Florida and Pennsylvania rather than California and New York, announced that this November he will run for president again. When Nader »

On Feb. 3, Jim Towey, director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, visited St. Thomas Moore Chapel and pledged that he “strongly believes” in the constitutional separation of church and state, and touted his mission to “end discrimination against faith-based organizations.” The next morning, the Bush White House issued a “Statement »