Reads of the Week: Election Reform Issues, Tibetan Oppression, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Learn more about how the Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!

Senators embarrass themselves for defending S.1 bill’s assault on free speech by Luke Wachob (Fall 2018) in the Washington Examiner

How do you defend a bill that would subsidize politicians’ campaigns, expose people to harassment for their beliefs, and impose a partisan takeover of the agency that oversees campaign funding and political speech?

Not very well…

26 Years On, Tibet’s Panchen Lama Remains in Chinese Custody by Georgia Leatherdale-Gilholy (Spring 2021) in the National Interest

Twenty-six years ago to the day, on May 17, 1995, the Chinese government “disappeared” Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the Dalai Lama’s choice of successor for the “Panchen Lama,” the second most important authority in Tibetan Buddhism. Both the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama are “tulkus,” incarnate custodians of a specific lineage of teachings. Both their roles are intimately connected, and both participate in the process of recognizing each other’s believed reincarnations.

From a poor Tibetan family in a remote village of Lhari county, Nyima was just six years old when he and his family were abducted by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities, making him the world’s youngest political prisoner. The Chinese government claims Nyima and his family are alive but continues to refuse to release them or to allow them to meet with observers…

Does America Need To Be Involved in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? by Matthew Petti (Fall 2019) in Reason

An American bomb was used to destroy an American news bureau in the Middle East last week.

On Friday, Israeli forces blew up a building in Gaza which housed several foreign news bureaus, after warning the journalists inside to evacuate.

Israel has claimed, without providing evidence, that the Palestinian militant group Hamas was operating out of the building. The Associated Press, the American news agency whose office was destroyed in the attack, denies the claim and has demanded an independent investigation…