Author Archives: Mari Oye

“Dar Amrika, Mussulman-ha hast?” the driver of our car to Dushanbe, Tajikistan asked me a few weeks ago. “Are there Muslims in America?” “Yes,” I told him confidently. “Some of my friends are Muslim. Some of my friends are Jewish … my own family background is Christian, but it’s no problem; we are all friends.” »

On Saturday, a 19-year-old was shot on Dixwell Avenue. I didn’t know him. Now, at least I know his name — Tywan. I know he used to smile at kids in the hallway of the Wexler-Grant Community School, and that the girls I mentor there used to say hi to him. “He was a bright »

On Tuesday night, for the first time since President Obama’s election, we sat down in a college TV room and watched him give a speech in real time, from beginning to end. Before an audience of cadets at West Point, Obama outlined his plans for Afghanistan: 30,000 more troops sent over, starting within weeks, and »

You might have seen the photo on the front page of The New York Times last week with Sen. John Kerry leaning in to whisper in the ear of Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan. To some, it seemed the quintessential image of international power politics — an American leader meddling with the course of events »

When we helped to found the Yale Afghanistan Forum last year, we wanted to set up a place on campus for dialogue and education about the country and about American involvement there. We’ve been working on it. But while calling for dialogue is easy to do, giving that dialogue a constructive shape is significantly more »

At age 70, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has no intention of slowing down: “There’s too much to do,” she said at a talk Thursday. Before a packed audience in Battell Chapel, Johnson-Sirleaf, who is the first female president of any African nation, discussed the need for women to participate in politics — both in Liberia »

Fighting climate change is one of the biggest challenges the United States and Japan will need to face together, Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki said Wednesday afternoon. Before an audience of nearly 100, Fujisaki argued that Japan and the United States will be able to make more progress on environmental issues now that President Barack Obama »

With memories of conflict with Russia only a few months old and domestic unrest growing, it is a tense time to be a Georgian ambassador. To make matters worse, many Americans can only imagine a Georgia south of the Carolinas — not in the south Caucuses. “We welcome the delegation from Georgia — that is, »

With a series of executive orders earlier this week, President Barack Obama set in motion the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, reversed seven years of legal wrangling by the administration of George W. Bush ’68, and left reporter Jane Mayer ’77 looking for a new story to write. Speaking to a packed »

Cindy Sheehan’s “soapbox” is making a temporary stop at Yale this week. Sheehan, 51, an anti-war activist whose son Casey was killed while serving in Iraq in 2004, made the case for political activism and argued that Democratic politicians should move farther left at a Stiles College Master’s Tea and a Yale Political Union debate »

Students hoping to pull all-nighters during Reading Week may want to avoid the Thain Family Café. According to several reports from student employees and a document obtained by the News that appears to be part of the café’s internal records, some managers at the café have been substituting decaf espresso for caffeinated espresso at various »

It is impossible for journalists to be completely objective, according to Katrina vanden Heuvel, at least. Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, a magazine which describes itself as “the flagship of the left,” addressed the Yale Political Union on Monday night to discuss the role of opinion in American media. She spoke in »