Ivy League

Latest Articles

The velvet rope of prejudice?

Race relations
RACE RELATIONS
By G. VALENTINO BALL | December 08, 2010

BU offers the class of 1970 a second chance at complacency

After School Special
Boston University’s class of 2010 celebrates its commencement this weekend, and BU has invited the class of 1970 to tag along.
By CLIF GARBODEN | May 12, 2010

Meet Evan Thomas

The parallel careers of Newsweek's premier wordsmith
Narrative is the throughline in the professional life of Evan Thomas.
By PETER KADZIS | May 13, 2010

Anything they can do, Dessa can do better
Since the only way to write about female rappers is to harp on gender, here's the catchy kick-paragraph buzznote that we're playing: Dessa has more in common with black Republicans than you might realize. Although she's proud to hail from Venus, the poetic Minnesota songstress has refused to let prejudice paralyze her rise in a male-weighted industry.
By CHRIS FARAONE | March 02, 2010

TV's conservative bias

The Palin question asked and answered; plus, rescuing Lawrence
If Sarah Palin were to smoke a joint while piloting a flying saucer to Cuba, evidence suggests that more than one third of America would approve.
By EDITORIAL | February 10, 2010

Teach for America and the power of ideas

Pedagogy
Teach for America, which arrived in Rhode Island this week, will be offering a relatively small crop of fresh-out-of-college instructors for the state's public school system: 90 teachers over the next three years.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 03, 2010

Howard Zinn: 1922-2010

In Memoriam of the anti-war warrior
Howard Zinn was a fearless revolutionary, but also a father-figure and family man.
By RAYMOND MUNGO | February 03, 2010

Fourth-estate follies, 2009 edition

The Phoenix's second annual year in media malfeasance
Between the rise of the Web, the ADD-addling of America, the fragmentation of any national political consensus, and the devastated economy, working in the press can feel a bit like manning the Titanic — and this year, the entire industry seemed to teeter on the edge of oblivion.
By ADAM REILLY | December 28, 2009

Whalin' on Palin

The former VP candidate could have proven her intellectual bona fides. She didn't, so let's move on.
Give Sarah Palin this: she isn’t driven by polls. If she wanted to improve her chances at political success, she would have used her book and promotional tour to convince America that she has substance and gravitas .
By EDITORIAL | November 24, 2009

Swine fever: An evening with Hunter S. Thompson

Buy the ticket, take the ride
Only Hunter S. Thompson could come up with a line like that; no one else had his knack for the near-Biblical proverb. Few writers outside of Madison Avenue or the New Testament can sum up a zeitgeist so cannily in a phrase.
By PETER KEOUGH | November 24, 2009

Revisiting the greatest Harvard-Yale game

Crimson Bowl Over Dept.
It takes some doing to make Harvard look like an underdog in anything. But Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 — Kevin Rafferty's 2008 movie (out now on DVD) and new book (released this past month) about the famous football rivalry — does just that.
By MIKE MILIARD | November 18, 2009

Inside the term-paper machine

The black market of term papers exposed
It’s never been easier for college students to hire someone else to write their term papers for them.
By COLMAN HERMAN | November 04, 2009

Interview: John Legend

A different kind of R&B star
Despite being one of the most successful R&B singers of the decade — with six Grammys and three top-selling albums — John Legend is something of an oddball.
By BEN WESTHOFF | August 05, 2009

Film: Universal Bites Jaws Into Vineyard

"All is grist to their mill."
Gov. Sargent posed for the photos on a pier in Edgartown, preparing to let fly a bottle of vintage California champagne against the hill of the Orca, a pleasure craft transformed into a Nova Scotian Trawler to be used in Universal's production of Jaws.
By PETER BIRGE | June 19, 2009

Robojudge

Stephen Breyer may be the right man at the wrong time
Judge Stephen Breyer, Bill Clinton's latest pick for the Supreme Court, has attracted support so broad that it spans ideological and political differences.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE | June 11, 2009

Life lessons

Coming of age in Education of Charlie Banks
There are schoolyard bullies and there are schoolyard bullies. Likewise, some stories about them rise above the predictable. The title character of The Education of Charlie Banks isn't even given a noogie — confrontation is not his route to coming of age.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 06, 2009

Mr. Populist?

Populism has many faces . . . but Obama's not one of them
Barack Obama is an inspirational leader, a potential realigner, and a racial trailblazer.
By STEVEN STARK | March 25, 2009

Losing a Brown basketball legend

Plus a mad money man, off-color comics, and a Laffey-Chafee gaffe
On the sadness front, while P+J missed our chance to say the sporting old boys hereabouts were grieved to learn of the passing of former Brown basketball star Eddie Morris on March 5.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | March 11, 2009

Cheer of a black planet

Hip-Hop Worldwide: More Than a Nation conference
It's hip-hop week at Harvard University. And while that statement is far less ironic than it would have been 15 years ago, it's still relatively humorous.
By CHRIS FARAONE | March 11, 2009

Crimson tied

A new battle threatens to disrupt the American political landscape, and it's hardly academic
Barack Obama's presidential campaign was successful in part because he was able to cleverly negotiate and navigate the battles that have plagued the United States the last few years.
By STEVEN STARK | March 16, 2009

The recording industry vs. free speech

This past week, US District Judge Nancy Gertner granted the industry's request to postpone the trial, originally scheduled to begin January 22, until February 24.
Download of Nonsense
By KYLE SMEALLIE AND HARVEY SILVERGLATE | February 09, 2009

President Obama

The trek ahead
In retrospect, it all seems of a piece: suitably fitting, almost ordained.
By EDITORIAL | January 21, 2009

Revenge of the nerds

For the first time since JFK, 'the best and the brightest' are back in the White House. Will Ivy-League intellect be enough to set the country straight?
Barack Obama's new administration has been characterized many ways — as a return to liberalism, a Chicago Mafia, and the harbinger of a new age.
By STEVEN STARK | January 21, 2009

One Day you'll learn

Second Courses
College students are told relentlessly to enjoy their time in school.
By CASSANDRA LANDRY | November 14, 2008

Wacko patrol: America's 25 scariest conservatives

The Phoenix ranks the individuals who will hold the most sway over the right-wing message machine in 2009, and beyond.
Imagine what will happen once the relatively sane folks now running the White House and the Republican National Committee pack up and go home?
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | November 03, 2008

Back Beat

At last, Kerouac and Burroughs's co-authored noir novel, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, resurfaces.
On a Sunday afternoon in December of 1997 I hooked up with the poet Jim McCrary at a Greenwich Village saloon.
By GEORGE KIMBALL | October 24, 2008

Morning Light

A curio of a documentary
If it weren’t for the ritzy camera work and the trumped-up soundtrack orchestrated by directors Paul Crowder and Mark Monroe, this tub would be dead in the water.
By TOM MEEK | October 15, 2008

Blown up

Shoney Lamar proves there’s life after Florida
Lamar’s voice both ravages and exults in the past 10 years of the Pained Male Pop Singer.
By MATT PARISH | October 08, 2008

Smoke screens

Does a surge of stoner movies mean America is going to pot?
What does it say about America that marijuana movies are a hot genre right now, perhaps hotter even than in the heyday of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong’s 1978 Up in Smoke ?
By PETER KEOUGH | August 18, 2008