Rachel Cohen

Moving top teachers to poor schools can help. The trouble is convincing them to do it.

In 2010, George Mason University Professor Zach Schrag published a book, “Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences,” exploring the history of federally regulated academic research in the United States. Institutional Review Boards, or IRBs, as they’re known, were first created in the 1960s to approve, monitor and review biomedical and behavioral research […]

Downtown Albuquerque, via Shutterstock This November, Albuquerque, New Mexico could become the first city in the nation to enact a municipal abortion ban. The proposed law, “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Ordinance”, which seeks to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, is designed to model a potent new national tactic for the anti-abortion community […]

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran Diplomatic talks between world leaders and Iran earlier this month ended on the highest note in decades. While Iran stopped short of pledging to freeze its uranium enrichment program and offered no public plan to dismantle its nuclear facilities—both deal-breakers for hardliners—a diverse coalition of countries has already begun urging […]

The Center for American Progress recently published an important study on the well-being of women in the United States. Entitled, “The State of Women in America: A 50-State Analysis of How Women are Faring Across the Nation, the research evaluated each state by three categories deemed to be most critical to enabling female success: economic […]

Antarctica, seen from a NASA aircraft, via There’s been a lot of news lately about the unexpected side-effects of the government shutdown, but here’s one that hasn’t garnered the attention it deserves. On Tuesday the National Science Foundation announced that given the lack of appropriated funds, the U.S. Antarctic research program would be cancelled for […]

With tensions over the government shutdown rising and the markets beginning to burn, The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky wrote yesterday that the Democrats just might have a workable plan- an unlikely solution from the unlikeliest source. In 2011, Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell proposed granting the president the authority to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. […]

Senate Intelligence Chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), in an effort to protect the National Security Agency from a major reduction of its surveillance capabilities, is arguing that the U.S. could have prevented the 9/11 terror attacks had we had modern NSA powers back in 2000. Feinstein declared in a Senate Judiciary hearing on Wednesday that before […]

This week Johns Hopkins University received quite a bit of bad press for asking one of their faculty members, Matthew D. Green, to take down a blog post he wrote regarding recent encryption revelations associated with the National Security Agency (NSA). The incident raised major concerns about academic freedom and the role of classified government […]

In an interview with NBC last night, President Obama urged the nation to watch YouTube videos from Syria showing disturbing images of dead men, women and children, as well as survivors writhing in agony on the ground. The White House says that’s the gruesome aftermath of a chemical weapons attack on August 21st , in […]