Reads of the Week: The Olympics in China, Disrupting the Startup World, and Taylor Swift’s Traditionalism

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 Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!

Olympic collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party is shameful by Caleby Ashley (Spring 2020) in The Orange County Register

We are unlikely to ever know what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did to Peng Shuai, but we do know that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is pushing CCP narratives. Shuai, a Chinese tennis star, disappeared for weeks after alleging that former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli sexually assaulted her. After a global outcry, state-run media outlets released videos and photos of Shuai in public, and she spoke with Thomas Bach, president of the IOC.

Her conversation with Bach could have reassured the world, but it had the opposite effect. The IOC won’t release a transcript of the video, there was a Chinese official present during the call and the IOC’s statement ignored Shuai’s sexual assault claims. These elements have led experts to conclude that Shuai is likely being coerced and that the IOC is complicit in this gruesome exhibition…

Congressional bill will cripple start-up ecosystem by Edward Longe (Summer 2021) in The Boston Herald

Over the past two years, lawmakers in Washington have turned their attention to reforming competition and antitrust laws, concerned that big tech companies have abused their market position. One of the most troubling proposals currently under consideration is Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Ken Buck’s Platform Competition and Opportunity Act (PCOA) that, if passed, would prevent big tech companies from acquiring smaller start-ups.

Under PCOA, digital platforms with more than 50 million monthly active users, 100,000 monthly active business users in the U.S., and a market valuation of more than $600 billion would be barred from acquiring start-ups that provide identical services. For example, Facebook would be prohibited from acquiring other social networks, and Amazon would be prohibited from acquiring other online marketplaces…

A Swift Return to Femininity? by Sarah Weaver (Summer 2020) in The American Conservative

It is likely no accident that women across the country have found themselves defecting to more traditional family arrangements in the last 20 months. Despite their numerous adverse effects, Covid lockdowns forced many to rethink their priorities. Many women found that working 9-to-5 in a cubicle wasn’t as fulfilling as they were once told.

“Nearly 3 million U.S. women have dropped out of the labor force in the past year,” one CBS News headline reads. While many of these women may have been furloughed or laid off due to the economic devastation wrought by the lockdowns, others likely reconnected with their children and husbands while working from home and found that this was, after all, quite fulfilling, despite having been told this would turn them into hopeless tools of the patriarchy…