Samantha J. Simon spent a year immersed in police training, which she writes about in “Before the Badge: How Academy Training Shapes Police Violence.” Professor Simon, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, took part in classroom instruction and

Two words – stark, sober words – sum up a dramatic mood swing in Europe that could redefine, and ultimately loosen, the Continent’s decades-old alliance with the United States. War footing. That phrase, voiced most recently by British Prime Minister

The 2.9 million airline passengers who take to the American skies every day are increasingly grumpy as they face delays, cancellations, and ever-higher fees for things that were once free. The reasons are complex, but when it comes to delays, a key i

Florida on Wednesday prohibited abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Arizona, meanwhile, took a step in the opposite direction when its senate voted this afternoon to repeal a near-total ban on the procedure. These actions underscore how the policy

Outside the Georgian Parliament on Tuesday night, a young woman with short brown hair, draped in the red-and-white Georgian flag, faced down dozens of balaclava-clad riot police officers. “We want Europe; we don’t want Russia,” the biology student, w

From New York to Texas to Alabama, law enforcement officials have warned for years that relaxing gun laws would lead to more violence toward police. The fatal shooting of a local police officer and three members of a fugitive task force in Charlotte,

As student protests roil Columbia University and other campuses across the United States, Congress is stepping in to the fray. The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed an antisemitism bill 320-91 that would pressure universities to rein in rhetor

Who will be Donald Trump’s running mate? With just a few months to go before the Republican National Convention, the search is intensifying, with the presumptive GOP nominee reportedly discussing possible contenders with friends, insiders, and even g

In one of the world’s most violent crises – which is considered by the United States to be as important as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine – a solution may have started last Thursday. Haiti’s prime minister, forced into exile by the nation’s powerful ga

Panic is setting in across Rafah. Even as talks seeking an Israel-Hamas cease-fire enter a crucial stage this week, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are scrambling to find a way out of this cramped southern Gaza border city – and findi

The protest movement roiling college campuses across the United States appeared to enter a more dangerous phase Tuesday, as student demonstrators who had barricaded themselves inside a hall at Columbia University were arrested overnight by police in

From the shade of a banana tree, Samuel Isingoma explains why he is sacrificing his precious jackfruit to chimpanzees. “Since I support and give fruit to the chimps, they don’t disturb anything else,” says Mr. Isingoma, who has planted 20 jackfruit t

The Middle East is seized by two conflicting moods this week: hope that a flurry of diplomacy has brought a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas within reach, and dread over the consequences should the talks fail. With parallel talks being conducted i

Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein won a legal victory last week when his 2020 convictions for felony sex crimes, including rape, were overturned by a New York Court of Appeals. But experts say the reversal falls far short of erasing the hard-w

As violent organized crime spreads more widely across South America, events in two countries – Ecuador and Colombia – illustrate how the region has become a laboratory for divergent approaches to peace and security. In Ecuador, voters overwhelmingly

Shawntell Fitzgerald is convinced that with the right kind of help in school, she could have learned to read. Instead, she says, teachers in Milwaukee’s public schools moved her on from grade to grade, even filling in her answers on tests at times. N

A woman in Australia, it turns out, knows exactly what is needed to fix democracy. "There should be longer terms of government to promote longer-term vision," she told a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. That makes sense. People need time to

Who are we? How do we decide what’s important to us – and become who we are? What’s a “real” American? These are some of the questions Rachel Khong probes in “Real Americans,” her riveting, multi-generational saga about class, race, genetics, values,

An interesting thing happened as some of us at the Monitor were discussing this week’s cover story. We had an argument. Not an "I'm going to go away and write terrible things about you on social media" kind of argument. But the good kind – a sharing

Will American teens lose their access to TikTok? Should they? A new law that could ban the video app – a platform especially popular with youth – unless it is sold by Chinese owner ByteDance, moves the former question closer to an answer. But the lat

Soon after Olympic swimmer Lydia Jacoby won her first gold medal in 2021 at the Tokyo Games, she graced the winners’ podium in a white tracksuit, her red hair tied up in a bun and her face hidden – under an N95 mask. Because of COVID-19 restrictions,

It was a Friday afternoon in October 2020, and Coralie, a junior high school French teacher at Collège du Bois d’Aulne, had just gone for a walk in the nearby woods with her dog to clear her mind before the two-week school vacation. It had been a str

For Laura Veirs, cycling was a time for crying. It was 2018. Few would have suspected that the songwriter’s life was unraveling. Two years earlier, a supergroup collaboration with Neko Case and k.d. lang had elevated her profile. Her latest solo albu

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged China on Friday to curb the flow to Russia of Chinese dual-use equipment critical to Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine – or face fresh sanctions. “Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine with

When Minouche Shafik was appointed as the 20th president of Columbia University last July, she was asked to describe her leadership style. The Egyptian-born, U.S.-educated economist told the school’s alumni magazine that she wouldn’t be seeking the s

Thirty minutes into the library tour, Louisa Sarpee wants to work there. History is so close to her. One block away from her high school, the small library she had never set foot in laid the foundation of African American librarianship. What is more,