Draped in brightly colored saris, Indian women lean over troughs of acid, submerging discarded circuit boards shipped from the United States and other developed countries. Without protective gear, these women, and sometimes children, work day after day dipping the boards into vats of acid-based solution that removes silver and gold components from the e-waste. This [...]

Half a world apart, Michael-Anne Myrvang ’13 and Dinah DeWald ’13 spent summer 2012 working toward the same goal: protecting the environment.
In New York City, DeWald signed on as an intern and activist with New Yorkers Against Fracking, an organization opposed to the controversial hydraulic fracturing technique used to extract petroleum and natural gas, including [...]

Look around the Swarthmore campus, and everywhere you’ll see evidence of student-initiated green activity. From the College’s oldest green student group Earthlust—founded in the 1990s and responsible in part for the College’s purchase of renewable energy—to the recent Parrish Beach organic lawn project, students have had their hands on the steering wheel in matters of sustainability, [...]

A year ago this fall, I stumbled around in the dusky light, making my way through trees neatly labeled. Paths crisscrossed, and I circled the campus trying to find the obscurely marked building where next day I would be interviewing for this job as magazine editor. I paused at the crest of Parrish Lawn and [...]

In November, Denver was named Colorado’s first solar-friendly community, thanks in part to the work of two Swarthmore alumnae.
“It was definitely Denver’s day in the sun,” says Jessica Scott ’00.
An even bigger surprise came earlier in the month when Scott and her collaborator of nearly a year, Rebecca Cantwell ’75, discovered their common Swarthmore roots [...]

This year, as he did four years ago, Associate Professor of Political Science Ben Berger is teaching his students about the electoral process not only in class but also on the streets. “We’re doing voter registration, and students also have an option to work with campaigns of their choice—whether local, state, national, Republican, Democrat—or to [...]

Peter Berkowitz ’81, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has accumulated advanced degrees with the frequency of a fashionista who must have the season’s new line. A master’s degree in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A law degree from Yale. A Ph.D. in political science from Yale. It’s an intellectual’s resumé, [...]

Diana Furchtgott-Roth ’79 is the kind of person who savors opportunities to explain how economic theory affects the way we live our lives. “I prefer to translate economics into public policy” is how she puts it, her words coated in a polished English accent. And whether she’s talking about health care, green jobs, gender in [...]

Why Obama is Still This Student’s Candidate
By Carmen Smith-Estrada ’14
During a campaign stop in Ohio this past March, a high-school student rose to ask presidential candidate Mitt Romney the question that looms for students across the nation: As president, how would he address increasing college tuition costs? Romney offered a characteristically vague response: “It would [...]

Asking federal judges to select their most outstanding case may be a bit like asking parents to single out their favorite child. For Mary Murphy Schroeder ’62, H’06, the choice was obvious—the righting of wartime wrongs against one courageous Japanese American remains clearly “the case of a lifetime.”
Not so for Frank Easterbrook ’70, H’12. A [...]