Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
In a matter of months, the novel coronavirus has swept across the globe and entirely up-ended our understanding of normality. Now, as the virus continues to rage and signs of a second surge are emerging even before the first has ended, we’re rethinking everything we’d assumed and hoped for at...
The former king of Spain, Juan Carlos de Bourbon, is facing growing allegations of corruption from Spanish public prosecutors. The current scandal will have an unprecedented impact on the future of the Spanish monarchy, an opaque institution that has been for many years shielded from public...
For the past decade, I have been researching the impact of Islamophobia on social media. After the outbreak of COVID-19, I was commissioned, alongside my colleague Roxana Khan Williams, by the chair and independent members of the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group to produce an evidenced-based...
The Guardian offered its readers what is certainly the most comic and hyperreal sentence of the week when it reported that “Boris Johnson accused the EU of preparing to go to ‘extreme and unreasonable lengths’ in Brexit talks as he defended breaching international law amid a mounting...
Following the poisoning of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent from the Novichok group, the possibility of using Nord Stream 2 to put pressure on Russia has been widely discussed. Specifically, there are calls to abandon the project, to impose a moratorium or to...
I have always believed that the independence of members of the European Commission (EC) was a keystone of successful European integration. Commissioners are obliged by their oath of office to seek a European solution to problems, rather than just seek a balance between conflicting national...
On September 2, German authorities stated that Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok group. Since August 22, Navalny has been treated at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, where he was transported from Russia in an induced...
The vacuum of leadership and the visible missteps throughout much of the Western world have turned developed nations into a fertile ground for what some people see as the resurgence of modern versions of fascism. Until the past few months, such a statement would have sounded provocative at best,...
The year 2020 has thrown the world into disarray, with a severe pandemic creating many unforeseen challenges. The COVID-19 plague has so far infected nearly 30 million people worldwide, with the death toll climbing toward a million. With rising unemployment and sector-specific industry...
A person sitting at a café in the small town of Kaş, on Turkey’s southern coast, where the Taurus Mountains drop precipitously into the Mediterranean, would look out upon a blue bay and a small island. If they asked the waiter, he would tell them that the island — almost unbelievably — is...
It might come as a surprise that the Gulf states have more than a passing interest in events in Belarus. Beyond growing economic ties, the political drama provides valuable lessons for the region’s monarchies and their efforts to maintain standards of living for their citizens without...
