Viewpoint

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is stupid

By Evan Wang | April 25

May is just around the corner and with it comes the beginning of AAPI Month. This convoluted acronym officially stands for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. However, in my experience, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many Americans, much less Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, actually celebrating an event dedicated to them. AAPI Month remains a useless holiday used to virtue signal fake acceptance of these populations as part of the “diverse” American dream.

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Guest

Op-ed: It’s time to give kids a chance

By Project SHARE Civic Advocacy Committee | April 25

What if there was a world where every kid with cancer was given the chance to fight for a brighter and more fulfilling life? What if we had the power to make that world a reality? Last year, Congress held this power in its hands. They had the opportunity to pass the Give Kids a Chance Act, which would allow companies to study pediatric cancer and develop life-saving drugs to ultimately give children the same chance as adults at living cancer-free lives. However, on Dec. 18, 2024, the House of Representatives was threatened on social media by Elon Musk. Representatives were warned that they could be pushed out of office if they voted in favor of the end-of-year package that included the Give Kids a Chance Act and three other important acts relating to pediatric cancer. The next day, the bill was crushed by the House before it could even come to a vote, reverting the efforts of patient advocates to square one.

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Guest

Op-ed: Enough is enough for antisemitism at Tufts

By Larry Azer | April 25

I am a proud alumnus of Tufts University (LA’93) and an even prouder alumnus of the Daily, serving as executive business director and a sports columnist during my years on campus. I am also a member of the Tufts Daily Alumni Council.

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Viewpoint

How effective is fact-checking on social media really?

By Anubhav Sinha | April 22

Back in January, Meta made a bold move — it dropped third-party fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram andreplaced it with community notes. The company said this change was about deepening its “commitment to free expression.” But not everyone is buying that explanation. Critics argue that there might be political motivations at play, and they’re worried that this shift could make it even easier for disinformation and toxic content to spread on their platforms. These concerns are valid, but there are larger questions lurking underneath all of this: Does fact-checking actually work? I mean, can it really stop people from believing falsehoods? And how distinct are facts from fiction?

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Column

Coffee Table Socioeconomics: Final remarks

By Linda Huang | April 22

I’ve spent the past year being what my friends jokingly like to call a “professional hater,” writing columns where I rant about the bleak state of our world’s social and economic conditions, usually while drinking coffee, as my column name suggests. To be clear, there’s no shortage of issues worth addressing, and I can always think of more to critique. Maybe this makes me a cynic, a pessimist, a subscriber to realpolitik or all of the above. But beyond venting, I’ve come to realize that the true value lies in the process itself — the act of recognizing the significance, complexity and multidimensional nature of these problems. It has made me realize that — in a self-conceited way — the ability to critically think about social and economic issues is what’s the most important. That said, all I ask is for you to do three things.

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Viewpoint

Your women’s, gender and sexuality studies degree isn’t useless — it’s essential to maintaining democracy

By Olivia Zambrano | April 18

When I tell people I’m majoring in sociology and Spanish, their response is almost guaranteed to be something vaguely critical of the social sciences and humanities. My favorite response I’ve received is “you’re just wasting your parents’ money” from a Floridian taxi driver. Despite the popular misconception that degrees dedicated to the social sciences and humanities are unnecessary, the current sociopolitical climate has rendered them more important now than ever.

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Viewpoint

A tribute to Professor Sam Sommers

By Aaron Bolonick | April 17

To this day, my grandfather mentions an English class he took his first year of college, where a professor taught him how to form his own arguments. Similarly, my father often mentions, with fairly vivid details, lectures he attended and papers he wrote that sparked his intellectual curiosity during his undergraduate years. I know that, when I am older, I will talk about the two classes I took with Professor Sam Sommers with the same kind of wistful enthusiasm.

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Viewpoint

‘Clique culture’ has come to dominate clubs at Tufts

By Michaela Loughran | April 17

Have you ever walked into a club meeting and immediately felt unwelcome? Maybe it was because your fellow club members were already so engaged in conversation with one another that they didn’t pause for a brief moment to greet you. Maybe you tried to say a friendly hello, only to continue being ignored. If something like that has ever happened to you, you are certainly not alone, nor are you at fault. Experiences like this are most likely due to something much bigger — the toxic “clique culture” that has come to dominate countless organizations at Tufts.

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Column

Through Indigenous Eyes: Indigenous education

By Sorsha Khitikian | April 17

On March 27, the Rapid City Area Schools district in South Dakota received a letter from the Trump administration’s Office of Civil Rights. Having concluded a 14-year investigation into school-based racial discrimination about a year ago, the district had finally agreed to provide equitable access to education for Indigenous students, who had disproportionately high disciplinary rates compared to their white peers. A civil rights agreement was settled, and an action plan was implemented to combat Indigenous discrimination. Now, President Donald Trump has nullified this agreement due to “DEI” and the district is no longer obliged to treat students equitably.

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Guest

Op-ed: Why we need human factors to save democracy

By Yahav Manor | April 17

Last fall, while filling out the tiny ovals on my mail-in ballot for the state of Florida, I found myself questioning everything. As I scanned Question 4, I read, “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion” followed by the description, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, ...

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Column

Coffee Table Socioeconomics: The rich should want to save the legal system

By Linda Huang | April 16

One of the seven core principles of conservatism is the commitment to the rule of law. It’s a principle that ensures stability, predictability and fairness — the very conditions under which societies flourish and individuals thrive. Hand in hand with this is another value conservatives proudly uphold: the pursuit of economic growth and wealth accumulation through a free market economy. These principles intertwine because without a robust legal system that regulates the market, the ultimate goal of profit cannot be achieved.

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Column

Ukraine at War: A reflection on the deadly attacks in Kryvyi Rih and Sumy

By Mariia Kudina | April 15

On April 4, I was co-moderating a discussion on risks and art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University for the event “Arts and Society: Dialogues.” I was looking at my phone and going over the sample questions to ask the participants when I received a text from my mom saying, “We were outside with your brother and our dog, the explosion felt far but the ground was shaking.” Momentarily, I tracked back my thoughts to before the event. Right before the discussion, I saw a notification that there was an air raid alert in Kryvyi Rih, possibly due to the missile carriers being launched in Russia. I had a feeling that this was not a precautionary alert, yet never in a million years would I assume that the attack would be that deadly.

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Viewpoint

Diseases are making a comeback — we need to take action

By Evan Wang | April 11

On a quiet summer day in 1978, then-40-year-old medical photographer Janet Parker came down with chicken pox, or so she thought. Within nine days, Parker was admitted to the hospital, being too sick to stand. She had developed sores that covered her body, blinded her eyes and caused renal failure. During this horrifying ordeal, Parker’s father suffered cardiac arrest due to stress and died, while Parker’s boss committed suicide, believing he had allowed the virus to leak from the lab where he and Parker worked. Soon, Parker developed pneumonia and could no longer respond verbally. Exactly a month after her symptoms first appeared, Janet passed away.

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Viewpoint

The attack on libraries is an attack on knowledge

By Sorsha Khitikian | April 11

My local library was my favorite place as a kid. I would climb the stairs to the second floor children’s section, making a beeline for The Boxcar Children books that were shelved in a model boxcar. I would check out audiobook CDs to listen to while I fell asleep. I read every Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Magic Tree House book the library had. Now at Tufts, Tisch Library, Boston Public Library and Somerville Library have all been mainstays of my college career, where I check out books for both research and leisure reading. But libraries serve many more purposes than just having books to be checked out. For example, the Boston Public Library provides free Wi-Fi to patrons and a safe space for kids. The library itself is a community space, with staff dedicated to knowledge dissemination and creating a safe and welcoming environment that anyone can depend on. However, right now, libraries are under attack by President Donald Trump and his administration.

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Editorial

The Daily’s 2025 declassified Tufts survival guide

By The Editorial Board | April 10

Welcome to Tufts! If you’re reading this article, you’re likely a newly admitted student — so congratulations! The Editorial Board of the Tufts Daily (us!) looks to impart some wise words on you (or current students who are reading this for fun).

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Viewpoint

It gets better: Making the most of your college experience

By Max Lerner | April 10

It’s nowhere near revolutionary to say that moving to college is a major adjustment. We are thrown into an entirely new world. For the first time in most of our lives, it is completely up to us to decide how we spend our time, who we surround ourselves with and what we make of ourselves. To put it simply: It’s a lot, especially in tandem with difficult classes and our uncertain futures ahead.  

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Viewpoint

How the Trump administration targets education to push its fascist policies

By Monica Reilly | April 10

We’re all familiar with the book burnings of Nazi Germany, with the images of bright fires engulfing literary works clear in our minds. In the generations since, this depiction of extreme fascism is often used to discuss the idea of censorship — the silencing of ideas that the fascist government found to be dangerous. While this discussion is true and continues to be relevant in our modern day, these burnings are more specifically emblematic of an attack on education. Now more than ever, we need to remember that a fascist government can only become successful through the spread of misinformation.

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Guest

Op-ed: A bipartisan statement on the arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk

By Tufts Republicans and Tufts Democrats | April 10

On March25, Rümeysa Öztürk, a member of the Tufts University community,wasdetained by theDepartment of Homeland Security near her apartment in Somerville.The next morning, she was transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana. As of the issuance of thisstatement, a federal judge has transferredÖztürk’s detention case to Vermont.

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Column

The Conversation: Are Democrats standing up to Trump?

By Evan Wang and Sadie Roraback-Meagher | April 9

Sadie Roraback-Meagher: Heya, Evan. Evan Wang: Hey, Sadie. How’s your week been? Sadie: Oh, you know, the usual. This week has been too long, and this weekend has been too short. Evan: Speaking of short things, Cory Booker’s speech certainly wasn’t. Sadie: Somehow, I just know you have something ...

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Guest

Op-ed: Tufts takes a stand for free speech — others must follow

By Connor Murnane | April 9

The evening of March 25, federal immigration officials detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk — a move widely suggested to have been a response to an op-ed she co-wrote for the student paper, The Tufts Daily. Last week, Tufts University made clear it “has no information to support the allegations that she was engaged in activities at Tufts that warrant her arrest and detention.” Tufts further clarified that Öztürk’s op-ed drew no complaints and was protected under the school’s free expression commitments. In fact, Tufts points out that “a search of The Tufts Daily will reveal op-eds on multiple sides of the issue with opinions that were shared just as strongly as the op-ed Ms. Öztürk co-authored.”

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