Education

May 9, 2025 0

Emily Feng on ‘Eerie Parallels’ Between the State of U.S., China Politics

Identity is a slippery, deceitful condition to define, even amongst ourselves. Look at your reflection on a Monday and you’re decisively one thing. Come Tuesday, that same image will provide different results. In reporter Emily Feng’s powerhouse new book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, the question of who we are as reflected by our political surroundings and defined by our cultural baggage is clearly delineated through the narratives of approximately two dozen people […]

May 9, 2025 0

A Force of Nature: Vivien Li has helped advocate for and shape treasured Hub parks, waterways

by Esther Wang

Vivien Li has not only witnessed the growth of the environmental movement in the United States since the 1970s, she’s participated in and helped shape it right here in Boston. As a waterfront and climate expert, Li has been involved in the cleaning of the Boston Harbor and the creation of more than 40 miles of public walkways and parks alongside it. She also advocated for the tidying of beaches from Boston to Quincy so they’re fit for swimming. In […]

May 9, 2025 0

Sampan Talks With B.U. Prof. on Hunger Strike Over Canceling of Palestine Speech

by Harmony Witte

Boston University professor Nathan Phillips, who teaches in the Earth and Environment department, began a hunger strike last month over the arrests of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil and his university’s removal of signs expressing political speech on campus. Sampan reporter Harmony Witte caught up with Phillips shortly after he began his hunger strike in support of free speech. At the time, the professor said he was healthy and alert. Following is an edited version of that conversation. A longer […]

April 30, 2025 0

‘She Represents All of Us’: News Legend Connie Chung Shows She Could Tango With Nixon … and Crack a Good Joke

by Anna Hu

Going to see Connie Chung talk is like going to a stand-up show where the comic also happens to be a famous journalist. The more than 200 audience members who filled the GBH Calderwood Studio for “A Conversation with Connie Chung” this March likely had a good idea of who she is: the first Asian American to anchor a broadcast program in the United States. They might have known that she broke into the industry and pushed her way to […]

April 29, 2025 0

These Students Were Sure They’d Study in the U.S. Not Anymore

by Darren Liu

Sampan’s Hong Kong-based reporter Darren Liu asked several young adults from abroad whether the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants made them think twice about studying in the U.S. That was in mid-March and the views were mixed. Liu recently followed up with the students after several high-profile abductions and detentions of university students and graduates occurred — including many with no criminal charges — and student visa cancellations. Here is what these students are thinking now as many have grown more cautious: […]

April 25, 2025 0

Docs at Arab Conference at Harvard: We Need Solidarity Not Charity

by Adam Smith

On a weekend when much of the U.S. media was fixated on the latest tariff spat with China, a small group of doctors in Boston was focused instead on the humanitarian crisis worsening in another part of the world: Gaza. Israeli forces had – just hours before the doctors met in the Harvard medical campus – struck Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, Gaza’s only remaining Christian hospital and, according to press reports, the last fully operating hospital in Gaza City. As the […]

April 25, 2025 0

‘A Man of No Importance’ at Speak Easy Theater Compassionately Explores Queer Life

by Virginia Sun

The musical A Man of No Importance, set in 1960s Dublin, delved thoughtfully into how love, community, and art can be spiritual bulwarks for a closeted queer person amid homophobia and conservatism. At Speakeasy Theater, this wonderfully acted and staged performance addressed queer themes of both “coming in” to oneself and coming out to the world with emotional depth, vigor, and bravery. Paul Daigneault directed this beautifully produced musical, his last show after 34 years at the helm of the […]

Demonstrators rally in support of Rumeysa Ozturk in Somerville in late March. Photo by Harmony Witte

April 11, 2025 0

Citizens’ Role in Defending Rights on Display in Öztürk Rally: Legal Experts, Activists

by Harmony Witte

“Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe.” This line was among the chants shouted by the thousands of people gathered in Somerville to support Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk in late March after she was abducted and set for deportation at the direction of the U.S. Secretary of State in what has by now become an international drama. The call from the protesters may have been more than a simple rallying chant, however, and more likely one of the […]

April 11, 2025 0

‘SenStory’ Breaks Mental Health Taboos With Performing Arts

by Virginia Sun

Elderly Chinatown residents took the stage at the Pao Arts Center last month – some sang karaoke to their favorite classic Chinese songs, a couple of them showed off their jianzi (birdie foot game) skills to the rest of their crowd, while others watched bilingual improv theater sketches in Mandarin and Cantonese. But behind the music, crafts and performing arts enjoyed by the nearly 200 participants, the March 8 event, “SenStory: Home as a Verb” contained a central theme: How […]

April 11, 2025 0

Make America Great. Period.

by Editorial Team

What is America at its best?We put this question to our team — to find out what version of America meets the potential of what we want America to be. Some of us answered, some didn’t. Some wondered if doing so could — in this America we’re living in right now — draw punishment from the powers that be.Some looked at history and others the future and others, songs. Here’s what we said: In my American history class, we learn […]

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