Articles by Robert Zaller

A few years ago, a movie called “Melancholia” appeared that depicted the imminent death of Planet Earth from the approach of a rogue planet that…

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got a phone call from my son. He told me to turn on the TV, and I…

We’ve become accustomed to joke candidacies in recent presidential primaries, to voters embracing hitherto obscure personalities who, in more mundane elections, they wouldn’t trust for…

Sixty million people worldwide are now on the move. It is the largest migration since World War II. It reflects the reshaping of maps, particularly…

It’s official (if you ever doubted it):America is a plutocracy, which means, in Lewis Lapham’s paraphrase of Lincoln, government of the rich, by the rich,…

Most Americans agree that we should have never invaded Afghanistan. Just about all Americans agree that we shouldn’t have attacked Iraq either, except for Dick…

In the early 1970s, America’s influence in the Middle East stood at its peak. Egypt, then the region’s chief political power, had just expelled Russia,…

“You’re guilty.” That’s what Drexel University says to its entire work staff in the so-called compliance videos we are compelled to submit to qualify for…

Last week, I saw the President of the United States greeting Pope Francis on his arrival in Washington, D.C. A day later, the Pope was…

A true confession: as a transplanted New Yorker, I had never set foot in Philadelphia until I was invited to interview for the job of…