The Huffington Post
The World’s Role in Burma’s Peace Process
An op-ed by Roi Bachmutsky [`17]. There is a joke in Burma* that George Orwell unintentionally wrote a trilogy about the country: Burmese Days about its colonial era, Animal Farm about its road to socialism, and 1984 about its military dictatorship. With Burma's national elections coming up in just one week, President Thein Sein has been using smoke and mirrors to persuade the world that dystopian Burma is history. The final act is the recent signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the Ethnic Armed Organizations that have long been plagued by armed conflict with the regime. Burma has changed, the story goes: it is a democracy, it has made peace. Enticing though it may be, this narrative is just not true.
  

Co-operative News
Interview: Yochai Benkler on market solutions through shared resources and co-operation
The challenge for co-operatives, says Yochai Benkler, is to be more self-aware. He believes that co-ops need to be “more self-conscious (in the way that commons-based production online is) of the broader social, economic role of co-ops as an alternative model well beyond the business sustainability and the success of the individual organisation”. Prof Benkler has been studying commons and co-operation for over 20 years. He started researching Wikipedia when it was just six months old and has since written about the co-operative dynamics and social and political implications of large-scale online co-operation.
  

The Houston Chronicle
U.S. Supreme Court could decide today whether to take Texas abortion case
More than two years after Texas's controversial abortion law was approved over a widely-watched filibuster, the U.S. Supreme Court could decide Friday whether to give the legislation a place in national history. The court has scheduled a private session to discuss whether to hear arguments about several cases, including a lawsuit filed by abortion providers challenging the law known as House Bill 2...Glenn Cohen, a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer and current law professor at Harvard University, said the cases satisfy the two most important criteria: they are important, and they have produced different decisions from different federal appeals courts. "The petition in this case makes a good showing on both fronts," Cohen said. "It's been quite a number of years since the Supreme Court decided an undue burden case, and this would seem to be a perfect opportunity."
  

The Wall Street Journal
Federal Officials Warn States on Hepatitis C Drug Restrictions
In a sign of growing government interest in rising prescription-drug costs, federal officials on Thursday said state Medicaid programs may be violating federal law by denying patients expensive hepatitis C medications. They also asked drug makers to provide information on their pricing arrangements with health insurers, which officials said could help ease the financial burden on state budgets...Patient advocates praised CMS’s guidance to states, which they said would help increase the availability of treatments for patients. Robert Greenwald, director of Harvard University’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, said in an email that his group “applauds CMS for clearly articulating that restricting access to HCV treatments solely on the basis of cost and using medically unjustifiable criteria is unacceptable.”
  

The Harvard Crimson
Law Groups Debate Gun Control
Two Harvard Law School organizations debated gun rights and regulations at a Colloquium on Gun Control this Thursday night. The Federalist Society, a conservative, moderate, and libertarian group, argued for the preeminence of the Second Amendment in granting citizens the right to bear arms, while the American Constitution Society, a progressive organization, contended that guns’ detriments outweigh their benefits. Caleb C. Wolanek [`17], the debate chair for the Federalist Society, began the conversation by stating the importance of respecting the rights of any American who chooses to own a gun...Kassi Yukevich [`17], representing the American Constitution Society, argued that America’s lack of effective gun laws have contributed to many tragedies throughout the United States.
  

The Boston Globe
‘Lumen’ and its international partners will track takedown requests
A long-running effort led by Harvard law scholars to track material that disappears from the Internet is expanding with international partners. The project, now called Lumen, was launched in 2001 under the name Chilling Effects. It was a response to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal law that allowed companies, governments, and people to request that Internet companies take down any material that was infringing on their copyright. By keeping a record of takedown requests, the site would “allow people to see what kinds of requests were being made, who was making them, what kind of content we were talking about,” said Christopher Bavitz, a co-director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society which hosts the project.
  

Bloomberg
One Step Back for Women in Judaism
An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Can a woman be a rabbi? For many American Jews, the issue is long settled: The Reform movement first ordained a woman in 1972; the Reconstructionist movement in 1974; and the Conservative movement in 1985. Regina Jonas, usually considered the first female rabbi, was ordained in Germany in 1935, and died at Auschwitz after serving as a rabbi in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. For Orthodox Judaism, however, the issue has been more complicated. In the past week, the two major Orthodox rabbinical associations in the U.S., the Rabbinical Council of America, which is roughly modern Orthodox, and the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of America, roughly ultra-Orthodox, issued public statements condemning in definitive terms the possibility of Orthodox women being ordained as clergy.
  

The Harvard Crimson
Recognizing History
This summer, the nation watched in anticipation as the South Carolina legislature voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from its State House. Nearly four months later, another symbol is being challenged, now at at this University. The Harvard Law School’s seal, derived from the coat of arms of the family of Isaac Royall Jr., a slaveholder, has come under fire from a new student group at the Law School called “Royall Must Fall.” Members of this group argue that the seal must be changed because of the history of slavery it represents. Despite our vigorous support of ending the use of the Confederate battle flag in all instances, we see efforts to change the seal as ultimately misguided.