In 2020 Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel inspected the taken-for-granted idea of “merit” and concluded that perhaps it’s not such a good thing after all. Now another member of the American ...

Books & arts Finding the right words Zora Simic 16 November 2025 Accusations that her grandmother was a communist spy or a fascist collaborator — or both — sent Lea Ypi back to Albania and into her ...

National affairs Are we there yet? Dean Ashenden 28 March 2025 At last, the Gonski money — which raises a new set of questions Books & arts Dizzying paralysis Dean Ashenden 17 October 2024 Two ...

Nations are built with pens and brushes not just hammers and nails. They exhibit their character in what they say about themselves as much as what is said about them. — Bruce Pascoe, Convincing Ground ...

In the wake of Trump’s first month in office, when his administration launched concerted attacks on education and research in every guise, it has been provoking to read the new edition of Martha ...

You could get the impression that Australia’s most liveable city is on its way to becoming an urban hellscape. “Jacinta Allan’s Undemocratic Plan to Destroy Melbourne’s Liveability and Quality of Life ...

In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, 93 per cent of children attend public schools. In Alberta, the province that topped Canada for reading and science in the latest round of OECD tests, ...

Australian schooling lives within the comprehensive failure of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s “education revolution.” David Gonski’s proposals, by some margin the best of a bad lot, had only limited ...

THE story of the devastation of the NSW Labor Party in 2011 begins on the night of one of its more miraculous victories. On Saturday 24 March 2007, the premier, Morris Iemma – whose government had ...

Labor’s complex relationship with Palestine — its in-principle support for a Palestinian state versus its ties to an Israel of the party’s imagination that no longer exists — has been decades in the ...

After months of public brinkmanship, with interest groups and commentators barracking from the sidelines and the threat of a double dissolution election hanging overhead, the federal government has ...

During the trial of footballers Jack de Belin and Callan Sinclair that came to a close this week, a nineteen-year-old woman told the NSW District Court how she went “dead and numb inside” when the two ...