“Burn a Koran Day” and the Flames of Extremism

It’s fair to say that the fifteen minutes of fame recently afforded to Terry Jones—the once-obscure Florida preacher with the misguided plan to burn copies of the Koran at his Dove World Outreach Center in... Read More
Square One near Ground Zero

An earlier version of this article referred to the Cordoba House Initiative’s planned Islamic community center (also called Park51) in lower Manhattan as a mosque. In late July the controversy surrounding the construction of the... Read More
The Pill: Still Safe, Effective, and Threatening after All These Years

With the passing of the pill’s fiftieth birthday, much ink has been spilled over the effect oral contraception has had since its initial release in 1960. Women’s rights have certainly progressed in leaps and bounds... Read More
Mutilation by Any Other Name

In an age of PSAs and the Vagina Monologues, many of us consider ourselves informed and educated about institutionalized female violence. “It happens over there,” we tell ourselves, pointing to remote locations on a map,... Read More
A Questionable Pro-Choice Strategy (in 140 Characters or Less)

In February a woman named Angie Jackson made national headlines by live-tweeting her abortion. In doing so, she sparked a firestorm of criticism and raised important questions about what role, if any, such efforts to... Read More
Humanists in Haiti

When a devastating 7.0-magnitute earthquake struck near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010, leaving over one million homeless and in dire need of food and medical attention, national aid organizations from around... Read More
Defusing the Neuron Bomb

On learning that the suspect aboard Northwest Flight 235 on Christmas Day was a young Nigerian born to privilege and wealth, I again thought of a girl I once knew—I’ll call her Alice Kim. When... Read More