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Commentaries/Opinions

How Not to “Bring Back Our Girls”

By Commentaries/Opinions

Only people who closely follow international news were aware of this situation until last week. It is right that so many people are concerned for the girls’ safety. Unfortunately, the effort to draw attention to this horror is of little use without a deeper understanding of Africa’s political situation.

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I’ve Served 15 Years of My Life Sentence for a Drug Crime — Can I Go Home Now?

By Commentaries/Opinions

Late last month, US attorney general Eric Holder announced [3] that the Obama administration would release new guidelines for clemency petitions, opening up the possibility that thousands of people serving long prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses might be released. The guidelines require [4] that applicants have served at least 10 years on a charge that would be prosecuted differently today – a standard which mostly applies to drug charges – and that they have a good prison record, a limited prior arrest record and no ties to organized crime. The author of this op-ed has served 14 years and nine months of her sentence and hopes that she might qualify for clemency.

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Lupita in the Mirror

By Commentaries/Opinions

On October 22, 1949, The New Yorker published a report by Lillian Ross on that year’s Miss America Pageant. It begins,

There are thirteen million women in the United States between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. All of them were eligible to compete for the title of Miss America in the annual contest staged in Atlantic City last month if they were high-school graduates, were not and had never been married, and were not Negroes.

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