The Vanderbilt Political Review is now accepting submissions for our fall issue. We are looking for essays of 500-700 words that display critical thinking, analysis, and commentary on current political issues, international affairs, and political theory. Submissions for the Fall Issue are due Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 11:59 PM. If you have an essay, ...
Noah Fram College of Arts and Science Class of 2013 It appears that most people would be happiest if we declared the 2012 election a draw and spent the next four years governed by direct plebiscite. Yes, elected officials are that despised. On the one hand, we have the sitting President, Barack Obama, who ...
Beginning with our first issue in October 2008, every issue of the Vanderbilt Political Issue is now available online. To access the archive, click here.
Wyatt Smith College of Arts & Science and Peabody College Class of 2010 Like most political science majors at Vanderbilt, I spent many undergraduate hours crafting papers, honing arguments, and developing frameworks for analyzing presidential decisions. For all the work, however, I hardly imagined that a few months out of Vanderbilt, I would have the chance ...
By: Noah Fram For all the Trump-Mania dominating political news of late, the politics of reality seems to have been swept under the rug to some extent. It’s a common problem in election season (which apparently now starts before anybody’s actually officially declared their intention to run): the candidates take first priority, often even over ...
By: Noah Fram Nuclear radiation kills people. That is fairly common knowledge, on a par with the idea that cigarettes are unhealthy. World War Three terrifies people everywhere mostly because the prospect of a nuclear holocaust is the most plausible doomsday scenario anybody’s yet invented. But nuclear power is a quite different story. It survived ...
In 21st century America, there are few institutions more unjust or unnecessarily harsh that the American Justice System. It is counter-productive to the best interests of society and I am advocating for most mandatory minimum prison sentences be repealed and a statutes be cleaned up. America’s laws and codes are so archaic and complex that many times, people don’t even know that they are breaking the law. In other instances, citizens are imprisoned for a significant amount of time when their transgressions do not all for it but the judge is hand-tied by mandatory minimums. According to Alex Kozinski, an appeals-court judge, “You’re (probably) a federal criminal.”
Featured, Online ExclusiveDuring the most recent State of the Union, President Obama stated that the United States needed to turn to a wide variety of “clean” energy sources in order to meet the United States energy needs in the 21st century. Nuclear, natural gas, wind, and solar, he said, would all be needed in a future of widely available renewable energy. Unfortunately, the President’s stated goals and his actions do not send the same signals. He is a major proponent of natural gas expansion and has largely ignored nuclear energy as a primary means of powering the electric grid.
Featured, Online ExclusiveThe income inequality gap is one of the most pressing concerns for 21st century America and it’s time to get crackin’.
Featured, News, Online ExclusiveNoah Fram According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, terrorism is “the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.” By that definition, the world’s first terrorist may well have been Genghis Khan. Or maybe Oliver Cromwell. Both used essentially the same ...
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