Have at it, people:

• The Other U.S. Educational Crisis.
• Pell Grant Outlays are Down, but There’s a Silver Lining.
• Why Scotland’s Approach to Publically Funded Education Works.
• Rules of Engagement, on political activism at American universities’ international campuses.
• A Short History of Enclosure in Britain.
• Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights:

In nearly 600 pages of text, Power barely mentions those postwar genocides in which the U.S. government, far from sitting idle, took a robust role in the slaughter. Indonesia’s genocidal conquest of East Timor, for instance, expressly green-lighted by President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger, who met with Suharto the night before the invasion was launched and carried out with American-supplied weapons. Over the next quarter century, the Indonesian army saw U.S. military aid and training rise as it killed between 100,000 and 200,000 East Timorese. (The figures and the designation of “genocide” come from a UN-formed investigative body.) This whole bloody business gets exactly one sentence in Power’s book.

What about the genocide of Mayan peasants in Guatemala—another decades-long massacre carried out with American armaments by a military dictatorship with tacit U.S. backing, officer training at Fort Benning, and covert CIA support? A truth commission sponsored by the Catholic Church and the UN designated this programmatic slaughter genocide and set the death toll at approximately 200,000. But apparently this isn’t a problem from hell.

• The End of South African Exceptionalism.
• Why are Some Founders Forgotten?
• Strange Bedfellows, on using the word ‘ally.’
• The NYPD in Israel: Hannah Arendt on the Best Police Department in the World.
• At The Elite Colleges – Dim White Kids:

What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America’s highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions’ minimum admissions standards.

• Why Nathan Harden has Yale and Sex All Wrong.
• The Next Digital Innovation in Education? Grading.
• Can D.C. Lead the Way to a 21st Century Waterfront?
• An Abbreviated History of New Orleans Levees.
• Four Surprising Ways the South’s New Political Landscape is Upending National Politics.
• The Myth of an Affirmative Action President:

But there’s also something else — the frame of skepticism is, as always, framed around Obama, not around Romney. No one wonders what advantages accrued to Mitt Romney, a man who spent his early life ensconced in the preserve of malignant and absolutist affirmative action that was metropolitan Detroit. Romney’s Detroit (like most of the country) prohibited black people from the best jobs, the best schools, the best neighborhoods, and the best of everything else. The exclusive Detroit Golf Club, a short walk from one of Romney’s childhood homes, didn’t integrate until 1986. No one is skeptical of Mitt Romney because of the broader systemic advantages he enjoyed, advantages erected largely to ensure that this country would ever be run by men who looked like him.

• DNC Delegate Leaves Party, Joins Occupy, after “God” and Jerusalem planks reinserted.
• Work Isn’t Working.
• “OSU Haters” Tumblr Puts Ohio State’s Racist Tweets on Blast.
• Porn Star Says Harassment at Conventions is Nothing Compared to Everyday Public Harassment.
• In a Mass Knife-Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?
• Sanctions on Iran Hit World of Warcraft Players.
• Burkina Faso: How Much Longer Can Compaoré’s Rule Last?
• Chicago Teachers Take On 1% Mayor and Labor Establishment to Boot.

and some old links I dug up:

• The Stunning Geography of Incarceration.
• The Way It Was, on getting an abortion in the 60s.
• The Legacy of Sabra and Shatila: Amnesia and Impunity.
• Larry Summers is Wrong About Language.
• The Problem of Radical Heroism.