Op. Ed

It used to be normal for academic types to speak publicly about the issues of the day. Today, most of this activity has been moved over to the ‘op-ed’ sections of major newspapers (for instance). For this paper, imagine you are one (1) theorist from the past few weeks of the course – either Kant, Simmel, James, Mauss, or Ghandi – and analyze one recent event that’s been in the news as if you were writing an op-ed. Rather than citing your own work, write “as if” you were the author in question: explain how your theory helps to somehow illuminate our understanding of current events and how it allows you to reject the arguments posed by other authors. To make sure you’re not making stuff up, cite at least one current news article (but up to three) to back up your claims. Your file assignment should be 625-825 words double-spaced (see syllabus for details on requirements of the file assignments). Please submit your file assignment on-line before the start of class on 5/15 and bring a copy to share with a classmate on that day as well.