Columns

GUEST ROOM | The Case for Keeping Labor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations

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The yawning gap between the industrial democracy of ILR’s embryonic years and today’s landscape of corporate tyranny reflects a systematic crusade against organized labor. Politicians and private-sector actors have worked together to expand poverty and stifle democracy  — all the while siphoning egregious sums of wealth to the already-egregiously wealthy. High-profile strikes made 2022 an exciting year for labor, but the share of workers in a union was the lowest on record, a fact that should profoundly disturb anyone who cares about poverty, inequality or justice. 

Columns

SPARACIO | Democracy On the Ballot from Now On? 

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Grammy was lamenting on the phone last night that this world is not one that she would want to be growing up in. Scanning the news, opinion columnists seem to be questioning how much longer we will be waking up to democracy for breakfast. Recent New York Times columns titled “Dancing Near the Edge of a Lost Democracy,” “What Has Happened to My Country?” and “What’s at Stake in These Elections” capture society teetering on the edge. Looking at the New York Times archives the day before Barack Obama’s midterm elections in 2014 did not reveal such alarmist attitudes towards the future of democracy. The current political climate hints to a democracy in free fall, and we can watch it flailing towards the center of the earth or begin to think up some sort of remedy. 

Bill Clinton

President Bill Clinton Discusses Fragility of American Democracy With Cornell Professors

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Addressing the Cornell community Thursday, former President Bill Clinton voiced the problems he sees within United States democracy and how Cornell students can strengthen these institutions and norms for the future. In the inaugural event in the Milstein State of Democracy Address series, Clinton argued that while the United States has always been divided, Americans must find a way to work together again. Clinton said he believes that democratic norms have long been damaged, and former President Donald Trump only exacerbated them. Still, Clinton remains hopeful and optimistic about the future — because of students like those who tuned in to watch his Zoom webinar. “[Democrats] are younger on average than our competitors, we are more diverse, we have the university network,” Clinton said.