In a world seemingly beset by problems, Steven Pinker has made a career out of focusing on the positive. For the past decade, the Harvard professor turned celebrity intellectual has been spreading the good news about human progress.

Following his inauguration last week, President Joe Biden released his “National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness.” Part of the president’s plan calls for 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to be administered within his first 100 days in office. 100 days, 100 million shots.

One week after Election Day Nov. 3, and three days since former Vice President Joe Biden was projected winner of the 2020 presidential election by main television networks and the Associated Press, five Herald columnists weighed in on what this election means and how we move forward.

If President Donald Trump is defeated in this election, he is going to leave office. Despite what some alarmists in the New York Times might say, he will not try to retain power; there will be no coup d’état.

Does Katie Hill think we all have amnesia? As you may recall (or may not if you’re in the amnesia crowd), former Congresswoman Hill of California was accused last October of having sexual relationships with several of her subordinates. Hill denied any inappropriate relationships with her congressional staff.

For the past several years, the righteous fight for equity and fairness in college admission has been mired in a state of moral confusion. Everyone wants fairness, but how? Empowerment, but for whom? To knock down barriers, but which ones?

If it weren’t already evident, the COVID-19 pandemic has further illuminated the greatest problem in American politics: Both sides think the other is irresponsible, both sides think the other is incompetent and both sides are right.  

In the first part of this two-part series, I argued that Bernie Sanders’ devotion to the cause of socialism has blinded him to the human cost of regimes that have implemented the kinds of policies he favors.

And then there were two. If there were any doubt going in, Super Tuesday brought clarity to the Democratic race. It is now a race between moderate and progressive. Build it up versus tear it down. Normalcy versus revolution. Biden versus Sanders.

In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, a punch-drunk Republican party, having twice gotten its clock cleaned by the Democrats and Barack Obama, performed something of an autopsy on the Romney campaign. The result was a 100-page report titled the “Growth and Opportunity Project.”