Portside

U.S. law did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century.

Irish immigrants and their descendants (our “exiled children in America,” in the words of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic) played a leading part in the Easter Rising. But the influences and inspiration worked in the other direction as well, especially in the tumultuous years following the Easter Rising.

Branch Rickey certainly deserves credit for confronting his fellow owners and their racist attitudes by signing Jackie Robinson and, in doing so, advancing the cause of civil rights. However, there is more to this story than Rickey and Robinson. In fact, the desegregation of baseball came after a decade-long campaign by black and left wing journalists and activists.

President Obama’s trip to Cuba this week accelerated the warming of U.S.-Cuban relations. Many people in both countries believe that normalizing relations will spur investment that can help Cuba develop its economy and improve life for its citizens. But in agriculture, U.S. investment could cause harm instead.

The world is currently transfixed by the spectacle of American elections. This contest matters. It is the election for the most powerful leader in the Western world, and some - like the Economist Intelligence Unit - regard Donald Trump as a major risk to global prosperity and stability. As citizens of one of the world’s oldest democracies, Americans like to think that the United States provides an influential role model for how elections should run in other countries.

With student loan growth rates spiraling out of control, it behooves us to think through the ways other time periods and cultures have monetized, funded or not funded student labor.

Over the years, Woodward’s beating receded behind more publicized stories like the lynching of Emmett Till. But with police brutality remaining a problem in many African-American communities today, it’s appropriate to highlight an important – and unappreciated – story of the civil rights movement.

Researchers have been hard at work studying how it is that innocent people sometimes go to prison for crimes they did not commit. A recent report documented that in 2015 there were a record number of exonerations in the United States, as many as one in four involving false confessions. Here are three pathways to a false confession.

More than a billion years ago and a billion light years away, two black holes merged. This was a truly cataclysmic event a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In Star Wars Darth Vader tells us not to “underestimate the power of the dark side.” This amazing discovery shows how right he was.

French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira resigned January 27 to protest President Francois Hollande’s new anti-terrorism law that strips those with dual nationality of their French citizenship if convicted of terrorism. Taubira, who was born in French Guiana, says this divides French citizens into two categories with different rights. Taubira, the target of numerous racist and misogynist attacks, played a critical role in the passage of France’s same-sex marriage law.