This time last month, the United States and Iran seemed to be headed toward a military conflict. The Trump administration was warning of new and imminent threats emanating from Tehran, evacuating diplomatic personnel from Iraq and deploying military assets to the region, even as some elected officials warned that the threat was being exaggerated. Military tensions have cooled somewhat since then, but Iranians are already on a war footing, as they struggle to make ends meet in an economy that has been brought to its knees by U.S. sanctions. Pressure is mounting on Iran’s political leaders, who this week followed [...]
Editor’s Note: This article is part of anongoing seriesabout education policy in various countries around the world. Thousands of teachers went on strike and marched for better working conditions in Morocco in recent months. The waves of demonstrations, which occasionally turned violent as police used water cannons to disperse the protesters, have since subsided as teachers have returned to classes. But there is potential for further unrest if the government doesn’t meet the teachers’ key demand: being accorded full civil servant status. In an email interview with WPR, Aboubakr Jamai, dean of the School of Business and International Relations at [...]
Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. When the Trump administration announced its decision last month to indict Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for violating the Espionage Act, it argued that it was not targeting journalists for their reporting, since it did not consider Assange a journalist. That did not stop journalists and other commentators from warning of the indictment’s grave consequences for press freedom. In an interview with WPR, Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, discusses [...]
