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India Today
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- India Today
Mapping conflict and its ‘flawed' characters
On the surface, Siddharthya Roy's The Company of Violent Men: Dispatches from the Bloody Fault Lines of the Subcontinent chronicles a series of essays based on his investigative reporting between 2016 and 2023 across Bangladesh, Germany and India. They are vignettes compiled from 'reported notes that didn't make it to the final edits'.These 'unfiltered dispatches' attempt to 'un-trope' the characters they feature—militants, refugees, clandestine agents, insurgents, reporters, wheeler-dealers and so on, whose lives have been flattened into familiar tropes of 'good and evil' and 'us and them' by the news book succeeds spectacularly well in this regard. Roy is so good at narrating what historian Hannah Arendt called the 'banality of evil' that what might, in another iteration, feel like atrocity tourism becomes instead an edifying the same time, the book is supposed to be a 'bit like a memoir'. We learn that Roy grew up affluent, was a Communist during his youth, likes Rage Against the Machine, and had a job as a programmer in a former life. At some point, he gave up on this conventional life and moved into investigative journalism. Because of his 'late' entry into journalism, Roy was advised by some editors to credential upward by getting a 'very expensive stamped paper' from the Columbia Journalism School, which he does, earning not just a degree but also a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. But piecing together this narrative of Roy's adult life is somewhat hard to do because the references are stochastic and intersect with the vignettes in oblique ways. So, yes, it is a 'bit like a memoir'.What is most impressive about the book, however, is that it is a primal scream, expressed in written words, against a world in which we are asked to live between right and wrong, and with both, and given no sense of what we are supposed to do with the anger we feel as a result of this. Anger against, among other things, state brutality (India, Bangladesh, the US's Global War on Terror); higher education (Columbia advisers obsessed with newsworthiness); journalists (who don't give credit to those who do the legwork, who glorify the 'untouched beauty of the forest' in which people die because of the lack of infrastructure, the German press nonchalantly buying stories from journalists from the Global South and running them with bylines of German journalists); the moral absolutists who have no regard for human rights, autonomy or dignity (religious fundamentalists of all stripes, Dalits, the Rohingya Salvation Army, Maoists, Kashmiri militants, the Tamil Tigers); and the power brokers, con artists, conspiracy theorists and 'middlemen' who profit from a global violence-industrial to India Today Magazine- Ends
Business Insider
30-06-2025
- General
- Business Insider
At 26, I landed my dream publishing job in New York City. I turned it down and moved to Taipei instead.
Catherine Shu, a Taiwanese American, had just started her career in New York when her boyfriend got a job offer in Taipei. The low cost of living in Taipei allowed the couple to explore the city while saving more. Shu still sees herself as American, but after 18 years in Taiwan, it feels like home. I had landed my first journalism job and was living in a basement studio. I was dating Ron, a fellow Columbia Journalism School grad, and we were scraping by on entry-level salaries. It was 2006, and we were happy exploring the boroughs of New York City together. Then, one evening, Ron called me and said that his financial situation was untenable, but he had been offered a new job in Taipei. He planned to leave in a month. He wanted to marry me and hoped I would move there, too. I was stunned by his de facto proposal and spent the next week ruminating. Ron wasn't a Taiwanese American like me. His family came to America from what is now the Czech Republic, Great Britain, and Ireland, but he had spent more time in Taiwan than I ever had. After studying international relations at Georgetown, Ron moved to Taiwan for postgraduate Mandarin studies before starting as a journalist. Meanwhile, I had not been to Taiwan since I was 11, when my parents took my brother and me for a family reunion. I kept thinking about how poor my Mandarin was. Ron was fluent, but I could barely string together a sentence. Unlike a lot of my friends, my parents had not forced us to speak Mandarin at home. I once asked why, and they explained that when they immigrated in the 1970s, they never imagined Mandarin would be considered desirable to learn. Reverse culture shock For the most part, I wasn't bothered by my Mandarin, or lack thereof. I was the first person in my family to be born in the US, and I grew up in a Taiwanese American community about an hour south of San Francisco. Almost all my relatives and parents' friends spoke English. I thought of myself as American, but there were times when I felt sad to be missing the Taiwanese part. After the talk with Ron, I began to imagine myself talking in entire Mandarin sentences. I applied for a language scholarship from the Taiwanese government. I called my parents and told them that I was choosing to leave my job at The Wall Street Journal to follow my boyfriend to the city they had left 25 years ago to build their careers as architects in the US. They were shocked. I assured them that becoming fluent in Mandarin would not only open up many new journalism opportunities but also help me be closer to our family's culture. Armed with my scholarship, I moved in August 2007. I was eager to embrace Taiwan, but I was immediately hit by culture shock. In New York City, I had been quite talkative, even with strangers, but in Taipei I felt bashful as my fragmented, heavily-accented Mandarin was picked apart. It soon became clear that looking like I could speak Mandarin, but barely being able to speak, made me an object of ridicule. I bristled when people asked how my parents forgot to teach me Mandarin. I wanted to tell them: "They did the best to navigate our lives as an immigrant household in the United States," but I didn't have the Mandarin to say that. Despite my intensive language studies, I felt like I was living on mute. Learning how to belong But I was also learning about my family, just as I'd hoped. I found out that my neighbor in Taipei had been my grandmother's classmate in elementary school. After the discovery, the neighbor began treating me like her own granddaughter. She invited me over for tea and told me stories about my grandparents. The low cost of living, affordable public transportation, and National Health Insurance meant that even though Ron and I still made modest salaries, we were able to explore the city while saving more. I felt safe even walking around at midnight by myself, giving me a sense of freedom I had never felt before. Ron and I got married in San Francisco, but held a wedding banquet at Taipei's landmark Grand Hotel. As my language skills improved, so did my confidence. I got a job at the Taipei Times, where most of my interviews were done in Mandarin, before I started covering Asian startup ecosystems for TechCrunch. I was worried about having a baby because of chronic health issues, but Ron and I were reassured by Taiwan's subsidized healthcare. Our daughter was born in 2016, and I spent my customary month of confinement resting in a postpartum maternity center. I have felt immense pride as I watched her grow up equally confident in Mandarin and English. This August will mark 18 years since I moved here. People often ask us when we'll move back. "Do you want to move closer to your family? Do you worry about the geopolitical situation? Do you miss America?" Of course, I tell them. But I think of the clean parks and hiking trails 20 minutes from downtown. I think of living in the neighborhoods where my parents and grandparents grew up. Most of all, I think about how I've spent most of my adult life here. I will always think of the US as home. I am culturally American and still have a heavy accent when I speak Mandarin. Even though I hold dual citizenship, I feel disingenuous when I tell people I'm Taiwanese. But I know I belong in Taipei.
Business Insider
30-06-2025
- General
- Business Insider
At 26, I landed my dream publishing job in New York City. I turned it down and moved to Taipei instead
Catherine Shu, a Taiwanese American, had just started her career in New York when her boyfriend got a job offer in Taipei. The low cost of living in Taipei allowed the couple to explore the city while saving more. Shu still sees herself as American, but after 18 years in Taiwan, it feels like home. I had landed my first journalism job and was living in a basement studio. I was dating Ron, a fellow Columbia Journalism School grad, and we were scraping by on entry-level salaries. It was 2006, and we were happy exploring the boroughs of New York City together. Then, one evening, Ron called me and said that his financial situation was untenable, but he had been offered a new job in Taipei. He planned to leave in a month. He wanted to marry me and hoped I would move there, too. I was stunned by his de facto proposal and spent the next week ruminating. Ron wasn't a Taiwanese American like me. His family came to America from what is now the Czech Republic, Great Britain, and Ireland, but he had spent more time in Taiwan than I ever had. After studying international relations at Georgetown, Ron moved to Taiwan for postgraduate Mandarin studies before starting as a journalist. Meanwhile, I had not been to Taiwan since I was 11, when my parents took my brother and me for a family reunion. I kept thinking about how poor my Mandarin was. Ron was fluent, but I could barely string together a sentence. Unlike a lot of my friends, my parents had not forced us to speak Mandarin at home. I once asked why, and they explained that when they immigrated in the 1970s, they never imagined Mandarin would be considered desirable to learn. For the most part, I wasn't bothered by my Mandarin, or lack thereof. I was the first person in my family to be born in the US, and I grew up in a Taiwanese American community about an hour south of San Francisco. Almost all my relatives and parents' friends spoke English. I thought of myself as American, but there were times when I felt sad to be missing the Taiwanese part. After the talk with Ron, I began to imagine myself talking in entire Mandarin sentences. I applied for a language scholarship from the Taiwanese government. I called my parents and told them that I was choosing to leave my job at The Wall Street Journal to follow my boyfriend to the city they had left 25 years ago to build their careers as architects in the US. They were shocked. I assured them that becoming fluent in Mandarin would not only open up many new journalism opportunities but also help me be closer to our family's culture. Armed with my scholarship, I moved in August 2007. I was eager to embrace Taiwan, but I was immediately hit by culture shock. In New York City, I had been quite talkative, even with strangers, but in Taipei I felt bashful as my fragmented, heavily-accented Mandarin was picked apart. It soon became clear that looking like I could speak Mandarin, but barely being able to speak, made me an object of ridicule. I bristled when people asked how my parents forgot to teach me Mandarin. I wanted to tell them: "They did the best to navigate our lives as an immigrant household in the United States," but I didn't have the Mandarin to say that. Despite my intensive language studies, I felt like I was living on mute. Learning how to belong But I was also learning about my family, just as I'd hoped. I found out that my neighbor in Taipei had been my grandmother's classmate in elementary school. After the discovery, the neighbor began treating me like her own granddaughter. She invited me over for tea and told me stories about my grandparents. The low cost of living, affordable public transportation, and National Health Insurance meant that even though Ron and I still made modest salaries, we were able to explore the city while saving more. I felt safe even walking around at midnight by myself, giving me a sense of freedom I had never felt before. Ron and I got married in San Francisco, but held a wedding banquet at Taipei's landmark Grand Hotel. As my language skills improved, so did my confidence. I got a job at the Taipei Times, where most of my interviews were done in Mandarin, before I started covering Asian startup ecosystems for TechCrunch. I was worried about having a baby because of chronic health issues, but Ron and I were reassured by Taiwan's subsidized healthcare. Our daughter was born in 2016, and I spent my customary month of confinement resting in a postpartum maternity center. I have felt immense pride as I watched her grow up equally confident in Mandarin and English. This August will mark 18 years since I moved here. People often ask us when we'll move back. "Do you want to move closer to your family? Do you worry about the geopolitical situation? Do you miss America?" Of course, I tell them. But I think of the clean parks and hiking trails 20 minutes from downtown. I think of living in the neighborhoods where my parents and grandparents grew up. Most of all, I think about how I've spent most of my adult life here. I will always think of the US as home. I am culturally American and still have a heavy accent when I speak Mandarin. Even though I hold dual citizenship, I feel disingenuous when I tell people I'm Taiwanese. But I know I belong in Taipei.
Egypt Independent
31-05-2025
- Politics
- Egypt Independent
‘A fear campaign.' Students around the world are shocked, scared and saddened by US visa pause
CNN — When Adefemola Akintade learned that the Trump administration had suspended the processing of foreign student visas, she immediately went blank. 'I don't know what to do; this is something I've always wanted for the longest of times,' she told CNN, still with an air of disbelief. The Nigerian journalist has been accepted into Columbia Journalism School for a master's degree and was on the cusp of applying for her US visa. 'I don't have any backup plan,' the 31-year-old said. 'I put all my eggs in one basket – in Columbia… which is quite a risk.' She is due to start her degree in New York in August having already paid a hefty enrolment fee. Akintade is among thousands of people across the globe who were thrown into limbo on Tuesday when the US State Department instructed its embassies and consulates to pause the scheduling of new student visa interviews as it plans to expand social media vetting for applicants. It's the latest in a series of moves by the Trump White House targeting higher education, starting with an ongoing fight with Harvard University and then dramatically expanding in scope. CNN spoke with several affected overseas students, who expressed a mix of sadness, confusion and fear over the latest developments and the sudden upending of their lives. Many of them asked to remain anonymous, citing concerns about possible retribution or problems in the future. Adefemola Akintade at her undergraduate graduation from the University of Benin, Nigeria, in 2014. Courtesy Adefemola Akintade 'A scary time to study in the US' 'It feels like a really scary and unsettling time for international students studying in the US,' said one Canadian student who has also been accepted by Columbia. 'A lot of us chose to study in the US for its freedoms but now knowing that innocent social media posts could cost an education feels like censorship.' Some prospective students have even started self-censoring. Another Canadian, accepted into Harvard Law School, told CNN how a friend working on Capitol Hill advised her to go through her social media posts shortly after the visa suspension news broke. 'We were looking at a post from us at Pride, and my caption was simply a rainbow flag and then a trans flag. And I was on the phone with her 'and I was like, do I have to take this down?' Eventually we decided no, I could leave it up, but I changed the caption, I removed the trans flag. I don't know how to feel about that,' the student said. 'I do think it's real proof that it is a fear campaign that is incredibly successful,' she said, adding that she has deferred her place for this year after getting a job offer. 'I changed the caption with the anticipation that it could get worse. Today it is one (issue) and tomorrow it will be another one.' The State Department has required visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and nonimmigrant visa application forms since 2019, a spokesperson said. In addition, it had already called for extra social media vetting of some applicants, largely related to alleged antisemitism. But it's unclear what kind of post might pose a problem for an application from now on, or how these posts will be scrutinized. A Pro-Palestinian student wears a keffiyeh during the Columbia University commencement ceremony on its main campus, in Manhattan, New York City, on May 21. Jeenah Moon/Reuters British student Conrad Kunadu said he'd been grappling with an 'internal conflict' over his offer to pursue a PhD in Environmental Health at Johns Hopkins University after monitoring the crackdown on US colleges 'religiously' for the past few months. The case of a French scientist who was recently denied entry into the US for allegedly posting messages criticizing President Donald Trump was a 'big turning point' for Kunadu. 'I was like, oh, wow. Ok, no, this is potentially really bad. I just don't know if this is an environment that I actually want to be in,' he told CNN. After wondering whether he could manage his anxiety that 'something (he) wrote in 2016' could get him deported, Kunadu decided to stay in Britain and study at Oxford University instead. Despite being grateful to have another option, he described his situation as a 'lose-lose.' 'I wanted to study in the US not just because, for my interests in health security, it's where all the talent and resources are, but because it's the best way to make an impact on these issues at a global scale,' Kunadu said. Like many others, he can't help but mourn the possible academic research and advances that now may never come to fruition. Kunadu and another student who requested anonymity both mentioned being anxious about exploring topics in their studies that could be interpreted as dissent and ruffle official feathers. 'It's incredibly distressing as an American to hear that,' Michael Kagan, who directs the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada, told CNN. 'It's not something someone should have to worry about to study in the United States… But I think, right now, it's totally rational. And if I were advising someone, I would tell them that, from a legal point of view, that seems like a reasonable thing to be concerned about.' Kagan described the visa halt as 'one of many attacks on higher education and immigrants… two of the Trump administration's favorite targets,' which in this case overlap. And while the directive is consistent with what the White House was already doing, he sees this as 'an unprecedented attack in a non-emergency time.' When asked whether those who had accepted college offers and were waiting for a visa appointment had any legal avenues available to them, Kagan was not encouraging. 'If someone is trying to enter and not yet getting a visa, (that person) usually has nearly no recourse,' he said. A sense of rejection In the 2023-34 academic year, more than 1.1 million international students studied at US higher education institutions, according to a report from the the Institute of International Education. The students CNN spoke with were all now trying to come to terms with their new reality and figure out their next steps. 'I'm still kind of hoping that there's a Supreme Court case that suddenly sees things in my favor,' Kunadu said. Oliver Cropley, a 27-year-old British student from a low-income background, told CNN that he was due to attend Kansas University for one year on a scholarship, but without a visa appointment he is no longer sure. 'It just feels like a kick when you are already down,' he said. 'Our strategy is a waiting game, we want to see if Trump is going to backtrack.' A glimpse into the Harvard University campus on Saturday May 24, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zhu Ziyu/VCG via Getty Images The Canadian accepted into Harvard Law School said she was glad the institution is taking a stand against the Trump administration. 'If Harvard caves, everybody caves and it's the collapse of civil society, right? If the wealthiest institution with the highest brand recognition folds, everyone folds,' she told CNN. For Nigerian journalist Akintade, who has always dreamed of studying at an Ivy League school, the feeling of rejection by the US is weighing heavily. 'This is the message I'm getting: we don't want you,' she said, with a deep sigh. Lisa Klaassen, Nimi Princewill and Quinta Thomson contributed to this report
NBC News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
'Heightened Scrutiny' details the high-stakes Supreme Court case over trans health care
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the next few weeks in a high-stakes case that could affect transgender people's access to transition-related care nationwide. The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, concerns a law in Tennessee that prohibits certain care for minors, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, and whether the restrictions are discriminatory on the basis of sex and transgender status. A new documentary, 'Heightened Scrutiny,' follows Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, as he represents trans youth, their families and a doctor who filed suit against the law in April 2023. Strangio became the first openly trans person to argue in front of the Supreme Court during oral arguments in December. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and will show at NewFest, a queer film festival in New York, on May 29, and then at other film festivals across the country. The film's director, Sam Feder, said it is a follow-up to another documentary he directed called ' Disclosure,' which was released in 2020 and evaluated how trans people are depicted in film and television. 'The motivation to make that film was to explore how the rise in visibility could lead to backlash,' Feder said. 'I did not know it would be as terrifying as it is now.' 'Heightened Scrutiny' features interviews with trans activists including actress Laverne Cox, and with journalists including Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School and a writer for The New Yorker; Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times opinion columnist; and Gina Chua, one of the most high-profile trans media executives. Much of the documentary focuses on the effects of increasing media coverage, particularly from The New York Times, on minors' access to transition-related care. Julie Hollar, a senior analyst at the media watchdog group FAIR, says in the documentary that she evaluated the Times' front page coverage for 12 months, and during that time, she said, the Times 'actually published more front page articles that framed trans people, the trans movement, as a threat to others than they did articles about trans people being threatened by this political movement.' Amy Scholder, who produced both 'Heightened Scrutiny' and 'Disclosure,' said that while researching media coverage of trans people over the last few years, she was astonished by how quickly much of the public appeared to go from celebrating trans visibility after 'Disclosure' to questioning it. 'It was disconcerting how many avowed feminists were questioning health care for trans adolescents and questioning the participation of trans people in sports, and especially adolescents in sports — things that just seemed so against my understanding and experience of what it means to be a feminist,' she said. She compared the public response to laws targeting trans youth to what she experienced during the AIDS epidemic, when people distanced themselves from the crisis because they didn't think it affected them or didn't want it to. 'Then the irony is,' Feder said, 'people thought it didn't affect them, but you chip away at anyone's bodily autonomy and you're chipping away at everyone's bodily autonomy.' The documentary shows that media coverage that is critical of transition care for minors has been referenced by state legislators trying to pass laws to restrict the care, and by states that are defending those laws in court, with Strangio saying at one point during the film that he had never previously seen news articles referenced so regularly as evidence in lawsuits. Feder said the film was originally going to focus entirely on media coverage, but Strangio's story allowed them to show viewers the real-world consequences of that coverage. They followed Strangio from July, just after the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the Skrmetti case, to Dec. 4, the day Strangio argued the case. The film shows Strangio the day after the election, a month before his oral arguments at the high court, when he says he's 'had moments of 'I can't do this again,' but then I wake up this morning and I think, 'F--- it, we fight.'' 'That's part of what is so extraordinary about him — he has that fight in him,' Scholder said. 'He knows how to be strategic, and he's such a brilliant legal mind and has always reminded us that we're going to take care of each other, and that these laws, for better or worse, will never actually take care of us.' Feder said that going forward, he hopes the film provokes conversations about how laws restricting transition-related care could have widespread effects outside of the trans community. He also said he hopes people will 'examine and understand how they want to be able to make decisions about their own body.' 'We're seeing state after state ban abortion, and soon it's going to be all contraception, and then it's who are you going to be able to marry, do you have any privacy in your own home? It's going there. This is one example of how we are a moment of complete civil liberty freefall,' he said.
