Weekly Writers Round-Up: Korean Conflict, Confederate Monuments, and Degree Inflation

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.

Why the Korean War Will Likely Not Be Over by 2025 by John Dale Grover (Spring 2019) in the National Interest
Millions died in the Korean War and the armistice that followed was no substitute for real, positive peace. However, the ongoing armistice is better than war with a nuclear North Korea. 2025 will likely not be that much different from today. A peace declaration or treaty—a real one that changes inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korean relations—would require one of three drastic shifts.

What would happen if Washington and Seoul’s disagreements over Pyongyang reached a breaking point? Imagine this coupled with stalled alliance cost negotiations, South Korea pushing inter-Korean ties despite sanctions or a unilateral American decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the peninsula. Perhaps, as North Korea’s nuclear weapons improve, Washington may want to wash its hands of the risks associated with North Korea…

Removing Confederate statues does not erase U.S. history by Jacob Bruggeman (Summer 2017) in the Washington Times
Confederate statues are coming down across the country as Americans grapple with national conversations about racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman.

By the weekend of June 19 (Juneteenth), when Americans celebrate the emancipation of the last slaves in 1865, calls for systemic change in policing now also encompass the 1,747 monuments, place names and other public symbols that honor the Confederacy — including cemeteries, portraits and the names of U.S. Army installations…

New Executive Order Fights Credential Inflation In The Federal Workforce by Preston Cooper (Fall 2015) in Forbes
On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to fill job vacancies based on merit, rather than require a minimum level of education for candidates seeking open positions. The order rightly recognizes that a job candidate with several years of relevant experience may be just as qualified, if not more so, than one who has collected a stack of advanced degrees.

“Employers adopting skills- and competency-based hiring recognize that an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market efficiencies,” the order reads. “Currently, for most Federal jobs, traditional education — high school, college, or graduate-level — rather than experiential learning is either an absolute requirement or the only path to consideration for candidates without many years of experience…