Volume 28, Issue 2 (2016)

Along with two literary essays, the articles in this issue of the journal address local, national, and international public policy questions. On the literary level, one article discusses whether arguments from an older era over a white writer’s presumption that he can accurately articulate black voices and experiences, itself an unconscious bias, can throw light on racial issues roiling college campuses and other arenas of public discourse today; the second, more mellow and reflective, ponders the incongruities and congruities that surface when the author explores how the meaning of the word home depends on one’s personality as he prepares to move his family back to Massachusetts, where he grew up. Three examine questions germane to Massachusetts: one on media bias leading up to the referendum in Massachusetts on bilingual education, a second on equality of compensation among teachers in different communities in the state, and a third on racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in the workplace. On the national level, one article looks at biases that explain why black women enlist in the U.S. military at higher rates than other ethnic and racial groups. And, finally, two articles on the international level. One discusses the urgent need to reorient long-term U.S. foreign policy objectives; the other makes an important contribution to understanding what might lie ahead in Iraq, if ISIL is defeated—sobering and rarely discussed.