Author Archives: Sam Bagg

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The French have a proverb: To know all is to forgive all. It may seem extreme to claim that greater understanding will always lead to forgiveness, but I think there’s a lot of truth to that notion. The better we are able to adopt the perspectives of others, the more we will be able to »

Imagine you live in the Gaza strip. Your grandparents fled from their homes in 1948, and they have taught you all your life that this was a grave injustice — the only injustice. You live in downtrodden Gaza City with your extended family in a one-room apartment, getting food and water only when Israeli politics »

American parents worry constantly about the implications of their children watching R-rated, or even PG-13–rated, movies. They won’t let their kids view countless films, made mostly for good, clean entertainment, because of a sexually suggestive scene here and there, or maybe — God forbid — the occasional shot of breasts. What would they think of »

Are you happy? Most Yalies say they are. It’s what we do. We value happiness highly here, so depression, in the Yale mind, is failure. Unhappiness is unacceptable. So Yalies will be happy, by golly, whether they like it or not. After all, if you aren’t happy, what are you spending all that money for? »

What is feminism, and why does it matter? Those questions seem to be on a lot of Yale minds these days. There’s been a lot of controversy in the past few years, stirred up by an increasingly visible Women’s Center, and in recent weeks the blog “Graphic Feminism” has been stimulating that interest in a »

Today, at perhaps the most important national ceremony in years, Barack Obama has picked as the nation’s spiritual guide a homophobic, anti-abortion evangelical who doesn’t believe in evolution. As a pro-gay, pro-choice atheist who believes that doubting evolution is akin to doubting we have hands, I should be outraged. Or should I? Most Americans share »

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. In the next few weeks, families will travel long distances, give each other gifts they bought in the airport and remember why they moved across the country in the first place. Old friends will send each other novellas about the accomplishments of their children, all under the »

What did we learn from Ned Fulmer? Was he right? Are Yale athletes mediocre, on and off the field? Absolutely not, and Yale athletes were right to be insulted at the suggestion. But was the extent of the response warranted? Several people camped outside of his room for a day, and for months, jeers and »

What does it all mean? A month and a half ago, McCain was ahead in the polls. Sarah Palin was electrifying conservative audiences, and the Mac was on top of his foreign policy game. What happened? Did Obama suddenly prove himself worthy? Did Sarah Palin make some unforgivable gaffe she hadn’t made already? No. The »

From the comfort of Yale’s ivy walls, it may seem ridiculous to claim that atheists are an oppressed group. Your average atheist is educated, white and comfortably wealthy. Here, we may even be a majority. So why were there not one, but two initiatives supporting the rights of atheists on campus this fall? Sophomore Jesi »

Your professors are lying to you. It’s not their fault, really — it’s the ivory tower that forced them to overspecialize, to become so engrossed in their sub-sub-disciplines that they could no longer see the big picture. But the big picture has been lost. Narrow, territorial disciplines build fences and ignore the insights of others. »