What We're Reading

Posted By Christine Y. Chen Monday, December 17, 2007 - 4:04 PM Share

Preeti Aroon

"How to Cut Ph.D. Time to Degree," in InsideHigherEd.com. Humanities and social science doctoral students in the U.S. can sometimes take a decade or more to earn their Ph.D.s. Harvard came up with a solution, or, should we say, ultimatum: For every five students who are eight years or more into a doctoral program, the department loses one admissions slot. The policy seems to have worked.

Christine Y. Chen

"Treasure Hunt," in the New Yorker. Marion True, the well-respected former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has been charged with art trafficking by the Italian authorities. This is a tantalizing peek inside the rarified world of the global art trade.

David Francis

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, by Marcus Luttrell. A Navy SEAL writes about the moral fog that hangs over the war in Afghanistan.

Blake Hounshell

"America's Priorities in the War on Terror," by Mike Huckabee in Foreign Affairs. The surging Republican presidential hopeful slams the Bush administration's "arrogant bunker mentality" and, in the same paragraph, denounces the Law of the Sea Treaty. This confused essay may explain why Huckabee can't decide whether Thomas Friedman or Frank Gaffney is his ideological lodestar.

Prerna Mankad

"Is there anything good about men?" by Roy F. Baumeister. A Florida State University psychology professor delivered a provocative speech (currently doing the email rounds) to the August 2007 American Psychological Association meeting in San Francisco. He answers this age-old question from a cultural perspective: Men are not only useful, but also exploited, apparently. Also, there is no patriarchal conspiracy against women.

Carolyn O’Hara

"Inside the CIA's notorious 'black sites,'" by Mark Benjamin. Salon.com talks to a Yemeni terror suspect to get the first look at what it's like to be disappeared by the CIA for 19 months.

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