Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson

This is a post script to the post below on conservatism and the curriculum, only this is specifically about what I said there concerning sports and politcs: So. Okay. I have to make An Important Confession. I don’t know anything about sports. It seems kinda strange to admit, but since my childhood sport was … […]

I report with sorrow that Peter L. Bernstein, all of whose books I have on my shelf, has passed away at the age of 90. The WSJ has a lovely obituary by Jason Zweig today. Investing has yielded a few stars so famous they are known by first name. Warren Buffett is one. Peter L. […]

Peter Berkowitz, a political philosopher who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has an excellent short opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Conservatism and the University Curriculum,” for which the title of this post is the subtitle. Berkowitz is an extraordinarily gifted thinker and writer, and this short piece is well worth […]

Blogging will be light for me over the next few days, as I am in Palo Alto at the Hoover Institution for a meeting of the Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law. We will workshop some papers over the next day and a half. But I will also add that this is the […]

to be pared back? As fault lines emerge among private and public players? Two good articles today on the pace and direction of the regulatory reform of financial services and financial markets. I’m light-blogging the next couple of days, as I’m traveling to Palo Alto for a meeting of the Hoover Task Force on National […]

on his article in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine on Shakira and her nonprofit educational mission in Latin America; it occurs to me, however, that this was probably not the most disagreeable assignment in third world journalism that Scott has ever undertaken. Scott is the foreign affairs editor of the Magazine, and the author of […]

That’s my take, anyway. Michael Kinsley looks at the business and editorial model of the new Newsweek. Characteristically amusing piece in TNR. Kinsley walks through the many problems of the new, revamped Newsweek. How much of it looks like the old Newsweek, to start with. But the essence of the critique is one that bedevils […]

In the last couple of years, much of my research and writing has been devoted to the law and ethics of war, and with particular focus on targeted killing, the concept of who may be targeted on the battlefield for taking “direct part in hostilities,” and robotics on the battlefield. These issues come together in […]

that best explain the 20th century. Acceding to popular demand for a film list, and I’m also interested in non-US fiction. Some commenters pointed to several – The Man Without Qualities, The Tin Drum, etc. – but I would be interested in other suggestions from around the world. Apologies for tying up VC with something […]

Name in the comments the five works of fiction that you believe best explain – not define or symbolize or exemplify, precisely – but in some way explain the past century to (in Brecht’s phrase) ‘those who come after. I have been asked this question by some high school students and before responding I thought […]

The day it happened in 1989, I was at a human rights retreat organized by Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, a remarkable private meeting of human rights organizations, from north and south, on the island of Crete. Remarkable in that it was one of the first times that anyone had tried to sit down a […]

A quick practical example responding unfortunately belatedly to a student who, congrats, graduated a week or so ago and who asked, what was what with proposals from the Obama administration to tax US corporate income parked offshore? I ran across a short Bloomberg article giving a practical example of what’s at issue with respect to […]

The WSJ has a story today that we are increasingly likely to hear in some version. The one-child policy and preference for boys has led to a well-documented shortages of marriageable women in China, particularly in some parts. In this story, brides marry rural men, extracting a bride-price, and then running away with the money. […]

The WSJ reports today that financial services industry groups are pressuring Congress and the administration to delay or weaken the effects of an accounting rule change slated for next year that would force banks and other financial services firms to keep, or take back, on their balance sheets assets shifted into special purpose entities (SPEs […]

Bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez has permitted an appeal by Indiana pension funds to the Second Circuit on his ruling allowing a sale of the company to Fiat. According to the NYT: The judge, Arthur J. Gonzalez, said that an appeal that sought to block the sale to Fiat could be heard directly by the United […]