fb-pixel Skip to main content

Don’t Look Back

Globe Op-Talks

Postcards from the pandemic

The past year has shattered expectations of what workdays look like. Parenting while Zooming. An uncrowded T. Wary interactions with customers. In this special issue of Ideas, we explore which of these changes will stick — and how they’ll affect the quality of our lives.

Click here to read more.

Latest

An Amtrak Acela train sits at Union Station in Washington, D.C. January 2019.
EDITORIAL

New Amtrak funding should be directed to the places that use train travel the most

MARCELA GARCÍA

Can Michelle Wu fix Boston Public Schools?

While big thinking is necessary for change, the mayor’s job is loaded with immediate problems and crises.
Dean A. Strang and Nancy Gertner

Supreme Court rulings on traffic stops reinforce structural racism in policing

The court was well aware of what it was doing.
Mary Ann Sorrentino

The chipping away of a woman’s right to choose

This most private personal decision, as the Supreme Court declared, must be protected.
Anne Bernays

Throw Shakespeare from the train

Alex Beam

What’s afoot, politically?

In this image made from a Windsor Police video, a police officer uses a spray agent on US Army Lieutenant Caron Nazario on Dec. 20, 2020, in Windsor, Va. Nazario is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop during which he says the officers drew their guns and pointed them at him while he was dressed in uniform.
SCOT LEHIGH

Police must be guardians, not warriors

Worcester Red Sox players held a scrimmage at their new Polar Park stadium on April 8.
Mike Stanton

Rhode Islanders, don’t go to Polar Park

CHRISTOPHER WEYANT

Miranda rights for police

editor's picks

Joseph Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto

Boston: The Silicon Valley of longevity?

IDEAS | ANNIE MURPHY PAUL

A smarter way of thinking about intelligence

IDEAS | NOAH Y. KIM

Housing will test white support for Black lives

The outbuildings of the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana.
IDEAS | TIYA MILES

What should we do with plantations?

public health
Reverend Erika Wilson, from the Awakening Spiritual Community of San Antonio, speaks at the Whole Women's Health clinic in 2019.
Mary Ann Sorrentino

The chipping away of a woman’s right to choose

LETTERS

With corporate ties, many Boston hospital leaders make themselves objects of reproach

Kimberly Atkins

I got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The pause makes me believe in it more.

climate crisis
IDEAS | DAVID SCHARFENBERG

Bruce Springsteen, Marie Kondo, and the power of subtraction

IDEAS | Julia Wallerce and Ari Ofsevit

Let’s board buses on both sides now

LETTERS

Renewable energy and renewed opportunity for fossil fuel workers go hand in hand

education
In an interview, Boston City Councilor and mayoral candidate Michelle Wu didn’t have concrete answers to some of the most controversial questions about BPS.
MARCELA GARCÍA

Can Michelle Wu fix Boston Public Schools?

EDITORIAL

Boston’s interim exam-school admission plan deserves a shot

LETTERS

What determines ‘fairness’ in vocational school admissions?

Cartoons

securing democracy
A voter submits a ballot in an official drop box during early voting in Athens, Ga., Oct. 19, 2020. A new Georgia law, among other constraints on voting, restricts the availability of drop boxes for absentee ballots.
EDITORIAL

MLB, corporate leaders wake up to assault on voting rights

IDEAS | TOM JOUDREY

Stanley Kowalski’s populist rage was a prescient warning

Kimberly Atkins

Civil suits could be the path to holding Trump accountable for the insurrection

technology
Damon Krukowski and Joyce Linehan

Spotify and the recording artist

IDEAS | GABRIEL NICHOLAS

Be wary when Big Tech says it’s defending your privacy

LETTERS

Vaccine passports should not usher the way to even more social stratification

civil rights
Law enforcement officers cleared an area of demonstrators outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department during a protest on April 14 over the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop.
Dean A. Strang and Nancy Gertner

Supreme Court rulings on traffic stops reinforce structural racism in policing

SCOT LEHIGH

Police must be guardians, not warriors

Joan Vennochi

‘Your dad was a hero’ — the clashing views about American police

Community Voices
LETTERS

Can you believe it? Religion’s been taking a hit

IDEAS | Elliot Brady

My job is to see beauty in ugly situations

IDEAS | RALPH CHURCHILL

What I overcame to work during the pandemic

Globe Opinion Columnists & Contributors

Editorials

An Amtrak Acela train sits at Union Station in Washington, D.C. January 2019.
New Amtrak funding should be directed to the places that use train travel the most
After years of waiting and stacks of studies, the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor needs federal money to overhaul its aging bridges and tunnels.

Biden’s delay on refugees

The White House’s failure to lift the historically low refugee cap means thousands of lives hang in the balance.

Biden’s mission: Stand up for Ukraine

A new executive order on sanctions could be used to protest Russian troop build-up on the border.

Boston’s interim exam-school admission plan deserves a shot

Reform to the elite schools’ admissions system has been long overdue.

Ending the code of silence for Boston police

The case of Patrick Rose should be a never-again moment for BPD. Officers of the law must be held accountable for breaking it.

Letters

Respiratory therapist Angelika MacClellan, left, talks with nurse Natasha Cacciatore through a door in the Special Pathogens Unit ICU at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in this April 27, 2020, file photo. The hospital converted the cardiovascular center into a COVID-19 intensive care unit.
Pandemic affected work lives in many ways
I’d like to see lessons from this episode in history be used to the betterment of "next time," because there will be a next time.

Fully functioning commuter rail could make all the difference

Enormous improvement is required to raise Boston’s commuter rail system to the level of service in major metropolitan areas in Europe, Asia, and other cities in the United States.

Restrooms at every T stop — how about it?

Restrooms that are as big and as well maintained as those at Logan Airport. If the Massachusetts Port Authority can do it, the T can too.

Can you believe it? Religion’s been taking a hit

I support and will defend your right to model what you believe your deity would do in living a religious life. But if you speak for God, then you shut out any discussion.

Still one major disconnect in our regional rail: between north and south

It doesn’t matter how fast trains run, or how much electricity you’ve got powering them, when you still can’t get from, say, Needham to Salem because of the gap between North Station and South Station.
Conversations with the experts writing thought-provoking Globe Opinion op-eds and Ideas features.

Meet the Editorial Board

Submit an Op-Ed

Send a letter to the Editor

Brave New Planet is a podcast the delves deep into the most exciting and challenging scientific frontiers, helping us understand them and grapple with their implications. Dr. Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, is host.
Watching the 2020 DNC felt like watching an infomercial for a product that was not made for me, but that I’m being told to buy anyway.
Political coverage often focuses on voters who oscillate between political parties in a few key swing states. Here we feature perspectives and opinions from and about demographics of Americans — young voters and Black and brown voters —who swing between voting and not voting.
Voters observed social distancing guidelines as they waited in line to cast ballots in the Wisconsin presidential primary election, in Milwaukee in April.
From voter suppression to gerrymandering to foreign interference, the integrity of US elections is under attack. In a three-part weekly series, Globe Opinion examines how the nation arrived at this moment and what needs to be done to protect voting rights.

Trapped: Why the GOP's death is imminent

The Republican Party is destroying itself. Thomas Patterson of the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center explains the five traps the party has set for itself and warns that the party's future is in peril without reform.

Black voices now

Globe Opinion seeks to amplify the perspectives and the voices of Black community members, scholars, activists, doctors, teachers, business leaders, students, and parents as op-ed and letter writers, and as innovators and provocateurs featured in Globe Ideas. Here we feature Black voices from the community amid the historic protests following the killing of George Floyd. We aim to amplify yet more Black voices going forward.

Legal Lens documentaries

Law and documentary film may seem far apart, but they actually share many connections. With the guidance of filmmaker and producer Joseph Tovares and support from the Hewlett Foundation, 12 Harvard Law School students from eight countries have worked since January on the Legal Lens project. You can view the films here on BostonGlobe.com.

Choosing, using, and losing your health care: A policy first-aid kit

In a four-part weekly series, Globe Opinion offers a baseline assessment of health care as well as prescriptions for fixing the industry.

Journalists are not the enemy

A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.”
National Student Essay Competition winners announced