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How to Write Your College Essay: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

Getting ready to start your college essay? Your essay is very important to your application — especially if you’re applying to selective colleges.

Become a stronger writer by reviewing your peers’ essays and get your essay reviewed as well for free.

We have regular livestreams during which we walk you through how to write your college essay and review essays live.

College Essay Basics

Just getting started on college essays? This section will guide you through how you should think about your college essays before you start.

• Why do essays matter in the college application process?
• What is a college application theme and how do you come up with one?
• How to format and structure your college essay

Before you move to the next section, make sure you understand:

How a college essay fits into your application

What a strong essay does for your chances

How to create an application theme

Learn the Types of College Essays

Next, let’s make sure you understand the different types of college essays. You’ll most likely be writing a Common App or Coalition App essay, and you can also be asked to write supplemental essays for each school. Each essay has a prompt asking a specific question. Each of these prompts falls into one of a few different types. Understanding the types will help you better answer the prompt and structure your essay.

• How to Write a Personal Statement That Wows Colleges
• Personal Statement Essay Examples
• How to Write a Stellar Extracurricular Activity Essay
• Extracurricular Essay Examples
• Tips for Writing a Diversity College Essay
• Diversity Essay Examples
• Tips for Writing a Standout Community Service Essay
• How to Write the “Why This Major” Essay
• How to Write a “Why This Major” Essay if You’re Undecided
• How to write the “Why This College” Essay
• How to Research a College to Write the “Why This College” Essay
• Why This College Essay Examples
• How to Write The Overcoming Challenges Essay
• Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

Identify how each prompt fits into an essay type

What each type of essay is really asking of you

How to write each essay effectively

The Common App essay

Almost every student will write a Common App essay, which is why it’s important you get this right.

• How to Write the Common App Essay
• Successful Common App Essay Examples
• 5 Awesome College Essay Topics + Sample Essays
• 11 Cliché College Essay Topics + How to Fix Them

How to choose which Common App prompts to answer

How to write a successful Common App essay

What to avoid to stand out to admissions officers

Supplemental Essay Guides

Many schools, especially competitive ones, will ask you to write one or more supplemental essays. This allows a school to learn more about you and how you might fit into their culture.

These essays are extremely important in standing out. We’ve written guides for all the top schools. Follow the link below to find your school and read last year’s essay guides to give you a sense of the essay prompts. We’ll update these in August when schools release their prompts.

See last year’s supplemental essay guides to get a sense of the prompts for your schools.

Essay brainstorming and composition

Now that you’re starting to write your essay, let’s dive into the writing process. Below you’ll find our top articles on the craft of writing an amazing college essay.

• Where to Begin? 3 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises
• Creating the First Draft of Your College Application Essay
• How to Get the Perfect Hook for Your College Essay
• What If I Don’t Have Anything Interesting To Write About In My College Essay?
• 8 Do’s and Don’t for Crafting Your College Essay
• Stuck on Your College Essay? 8 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block

Understand how to write a great hook for your essay

Complete the first drafts of your essay

Editing and polishing your essay

Have a first draft ready? See our top editing tips below. Also, you may want to submit your essay to our free Essay Peer Review to get quick feedback and join a community of other students working on their essays.

• 11 Tips for Proofreading and Editing Your College Essay
• Getting Help with Your College Essay
• 5 DIY Tips for Editing Your College Essay
• How Long Should Your College Essay Be?
• Essential Grammar Rules for Your College Apps
• College Essay Checklist: Are You Ready to Submit?

Proofread and edited your essay.

Had someone else look through your essay — we recommend submitting it for a peer review.

Make sure your essay meets all requirements — consider signing up for a free account to view our per-prompt checklists to help you understand when you’re really ready to submit.

Advanced College Essay Techniques

Let’s take it one step further and see how we can make your college essay really stand out! We recommend reading through these posts when you have a draft to work with.

• 10 Guidelines for Highly Readable College Essays
• How to Use Literary Devices to Enhance Your Essay
• How to Develop a Personalized Metaphor for Your College Applications

• Entrance Essay
• Communication Across the Curriculum (CAC)
• For Students

If you are an incoming student and have not met the Basic Writing Proficiency requirement (either through prior coursework or Advanced Placement testing), then your application essay will be evaluated as a writing sample. If the application form that you use does not specify an application essay, you can submit a separate essay using the directions below. Your essay will be reviewed by staff in the Communication Across the Curriculum (CAC) program to assess your writing skills, including your ability to achieve the following goals:

• A clear focus on a topic or basic claim
• Two or three well-developed points to explain or give evidence in support of the topic
• Flow of ideas (clear connections between each main point)
• Effective sentence structure, punctuation, and word choice
• Conformance with standard usage

Write an essay about one of the following topics:

• Is there an influential person in your life? If so, describe this person and give two or three reasons for their importance to you—that is, explain two or three ways in which this person has had an impact on you.
• Have you had a significant personal experience? If so, describe this experience and give two or three reasons for its significance in your life—that is, explain two or three ways in which this experience has had an impact on you.
• What do you regard as the most important modern invention? Describe this invention and give two or three reasons why it is important.

Requirements

The essay should be about 500 words and respond to one of the prompts above. The essay should be addressed to an adult reader and should be self-contained (the author should assume that the reader has not read these instructions).

Essay Assessment

Essays are assessed on the following criteria: 

The document is well-designed to meet the needs of a particular audience or type of audience. For example, ideas are organized appropriately to help the document’s user perform a task; visuals are appropriate.

Development

The ideas in the document are developed (explained or illustrated) in consistent and appropriate levels of detail and generalization.

The principle of organization and the connections between elements of the document are clearly signaled.

Sentences have a clear structure that can be easily understood by the intended audience, with good focus (discrimination between key ideas and various levels of supporting ideas). Sentence length and variety are appropriate, common errors of style are avoided, and word choice is appropriate.

The document conforms to the accepted usage of college-educated professionals in written documents (e.g., noun/verb agreement, pronoun reference, and spelling).

Scoring and Placement

The rubric below is used to score essay submissions and determine placement. Students who receive a 4 or 5 will have met the basic writing requirement, and are not required to take COM 101 or COM 111. Students receiving a 3 or below will need to take COM 101 or COM 111 in order to meet the basic writing requirement. 

Learn more...

Webb Institute

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• Essay prompt

Want to see your chances of admission at Webb Institute?

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Webb Institute’s 2023-24 Essay Prompts

Select-a-prompt essay.

Please use the space below to answer one of the following prompts:

Why Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering?

Common App Personal Essay

The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don‘t feel obligated to do so.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you‘ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

What will first-time readers think of your college essay?

Home — Application Essay — Architecture & Design School — My Motivation to Study at the Fashion Institute of Technology

My Motivation to Study at the Fashion Institute of Technology

About this sample

Words: 778 |

Updated: Nov 30, 2023

Words: 778 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Reflecting on my childhood, it's clear that my passion for fashion and design, a seed that would eventually lead me towards the Fashion Institute of Technology, was evident from an early age. I spent countless hours in the world of dress-up, effortlessly shifting roles from a princess to a doctor, a chef, or a model. My dolls, the first recipients of my budding design instincts, were never left in their original state. They underwent dramatic makeovers - a snip here, a new outfit there - ultimately culminating in fashion shows to showcase their fresh, innovative looks. At the time, this was more than play; it was the beginning of a lifelong journey in fashion.

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As I got older, fashion began to interest me even more and eventually became an addiction. I would spend hours looking through fashion blogs, and reading through stacks of fashion magazines. By the time I reached my freshman year of high school, I knew the fashion industry was where I wanted to be in life. I was hooked.

Entering high school with the goal of being in the fashion industry one day, I took as many fashion related classes that I could. In 10th grade, I was able to take the first one of these classes, which was an introductory course to fashion. This was one of my favorite classes of the entire year and through this class, I was able to put the skills that I learned to use and participate in a service project for sewing tote bags for the homeless. It was great using fashion to not only help someone in the practical way of them having something to carry their things in, but also in the sense that it would be something new for them, something that could make them feel stylish in what would be a very difficult time in their life. After having such a good experience in this class, I wanted to take another. My junior year of high school, I was able to take Fashion Merchandising. I looked forward to going to this class every day as what we were learning, and the projects that we did were so enjoyable. This is where I realized that I wanted a job specifically in fashion merchandising.

The Fashion Merchandising Management program at Fashion Institude of Technology is a very rigorous program, requiring a variety of different characteristics to succeed in the program, with one of them being a strong work ethic, which I have prepared myself for through my challenging course load that I have had throughout high school. Beginning during my freshman year of high school, I have always taken the most difficult classes that were available to me. My junior year, I was able to take 3 Advanced Placement classes and I am taking 7 Advanced Placement classes currently, during my senior year. One of the Advanced Placement classes that I am taking this year is AP French. I am not only taking this class because of my love of the French language, but also because I believe that it will be a beneficial skill to be able to speak another language in the fashion industry. I hope to be fluent in French by the end of this course and it will help me to be able to understand not only the language, but the culture of a variety of different people and potential employers throughout the fashion industry and to not be disrespectful in expecting them to already know English. I have also been a part of the French Club at my high school, taking on different leadership roles such as Secretary and Vice President. This characteristic of leadership will help me to better succeed in this program, especially when working with a group. I also believe that my years in gymnastics have contributed to my strong work ethic and team work skills. Being a competitive gymnast for 4 years, I would have to train in the gym for hours to perfect the skills I was working on for meets. At meets my teammates and I would support each other, so that we would be able to perform to the best of our abilities. This has shown me that any goal in achievable, as long as you put in the time and effort needed to get there.

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To conclude the essay, the admission to the Fashion Merchandising Management program will offer me countless opportunities to be prepared for a career in fashion merchandising through networking with industry executives, the invaluable skills that I will learn about the industry, and the amazing study abroad opportunities. Eventually, I dream of being able to be a top executive in the fashion merchandising field, and being a part of this program at FIT is a crucial step in this process.

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• 12 min read

The Ultimate Guide to the John Locke Essay Competition

Humanities and social sciences students often lack the opportunities to compete at the global level and demonstrate their expertise. Competitions like ISEF, Science Talent Search, and MIT Think are generally reserved for students in fields like biology, physics, and chemistry.

At Lumiere, many of our talented non-STEM students, who have a flair for writing are looking for ways to flex their skills. In this piece, we’ll go over one such competition - the John Locke Essay Competition. If you’re interested in learning more about how we guide students to win essay contests like this, check out our main page .

What is the John Locke Essay Competition?

The essay competition is one of the various programs conducted by the John Locke Institute (JLI) every year apart from their summer and gap year courses. To understand the philosophy behind this competition, it’ll help if we take a quick detour to know more about the institute that conducts it.

Founded in 2011, JLI is an educational organization that runs summer and gap year courses in the humanities and social sciences for high school students. These courses are primarily taught by academics from Oxford and Princeton along with some other universities. The organization was founded by Martin Cox. Our Lumiere founder, Stephen, has met Martin and had a very positive experience. Martin clearly cares about academic rigor.

The institute's core belief is that the ability to evaluate the merit of information and develop articulate sound judgments is more important than merely consuming information. The essay competition is an extension of the institute - pushing students to reason through complex questions in seven subject areas namely Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology, and Law​.

The organization also seems to have a strong record of admissions of alumni to the top colleges in the US and UK. For instance, between 2011 and 2022, over half of John Locke alumni have gone on to one of eight colleges: Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

How prestigious is the John Locke Contest?

The John Locke Contest is a rigorous and selective writing competition in the social sciences and humanities. While it is not as selective as the Concord Review and has a much broader range of students who can receive prizes, it is still considered a highly competitive program.

Winning a John Locke essay contest will have clear benefits for you in your application process to universities and would reflect well on your application. On the other hand, a shortlist or a commendation might not have a huge impact given that it is awarded to many students (more on this later).

What is the eligibility for the contest?

Students, of any country, who are 18 years old or younger before the date of submission can submit. They also have a junior category for students who are fourteen years old, or younger, on the date of the submission deadline.

Who SHOULD consider this competition?

We recommend this competition for students who are interested in social sciences and humanities, in particular philosophy, politics, and economics. It is also a good fit for students who enjoy writing, want to dive deep into critical reasoning, and have some flair in their writing approach (more on that below).

While STEM students can of course compete, they will have to approach the topics through a social science lens. For example, in 2021, one of the prompts in the division of philosophy was, ‘Are there subjects about which we should not even ask questions?’ Here, students of biology can comfortably write about topics revolving around cloning, gene alteration, etc, however, they will have to make sure that they are able to ground this in the theoretical background of scientific ethics and ethical philosophy in general.

Additional logistics

Each essay should address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, footnotes, bibliography, or authorship declaration).

If you are using an in-text-based referencing format, such as APA, your in-text citations are included in the word limit.

You can submit as many essays as you want in any and all categories. (We recommend aiming for only one given how time-consuming it can be to come up with a single good-quality submission)

Important dates

Prompts for the 2023 competition will be released in January 2023. Your submission will be due around 6 months later in June. Shortlisted candidates will be notified in mid-July which will be followed by the final award ceremony in September.

How much does it cost to take part?

What do you win?

A scholarship that will offset the cost of attending a course at the JLI. The amount will vary between $2000 and $10,000 based on whether you are a grand prize winner (best essay across all categories) or a subject category winner. (JLI programs are steeply-priced and even getting a prize in your category would not cover the entire cost of your program. While the website does not mention the cost of the upcoming summer program, a different website mentions it to be 3,000 GBP or 3600 USD)

If you were shortlisted, most probably, you will also receive a commendation certificate and an invitation to attend an academic ceremony at Oxford. However, even here, you will have to foot the bill for attending the conference, which can be a significant one if you are an international student.

How do you submit your entry?

You submit your entry through the website portal that will show up once the prompts for the next competition are up in January! You have to submit your essay in pdf format where the title of the pdf attachment should read SURNAME, First Name, Category, and Question Number (e.g. POPHAM, Alexander, Psychology, Q2).

What are the essay prompts like?

We have three insights here.

Firstly, true to the spirit of the enlightenment thinker it is named after, most of the prompts have a philosophical bent and cover ethical, social, and political themes. In line with JLI’s general philosophy, they force you to think hard and deeply about the topics they cover. Consider a few examples to understand this better:

“Are you more moral than most people you know? How do you know? Should you strive to be more moral? Why or why not?” - Philosophy, 2021

“What are the most important economic effects - good and bad - of forced redistribution? How should this inform government policy?” - Economics, 2020

“Why did the Jesus of Nazareth reserve his strongest condemnation for the self-righteous?” - Theology, 2021

“Should we judge those from the past by the standards of today? How will historians in the future judge us?” - History, 2021

Secondly, at Lumiere, our analysis is that most of these prompts are ‘deceptively rigorous’ because the complexity of the topic reveals itself gradually. The topics do not give you a lot to work with and it is only when you delve deeper into one that you realize the extent to which you need to research/read more. In some of the topics, you are compelled to define the limits of the prompt yourself and in turn, the scope of your essay. This can be a challenging exercise. Allow me to illustrate this with an example of the 2019 philosophy prompt.

“Aristotelian virtue ethics achieved something of a resurgence in the twentieth century. Was this progress or retrogression?”

Here you are supposed to develop your own method for determining what exactly constitutes progress in ethical thought. This in turn involves familiarizing yourself with existing benchmarks of measurement and developing your own method if required. This is a significant intellectual exercise.

Finally, a lot of the topics are on issues of contemporary relevance and especially on issues that are contentious . For instance, in 2019, one of the prompts for economics was about the benefits and costs of immigration whereas the 2020 essay prompt for theology was about whether Islam is a religion of peace . As we explain later, your ‘opinion’ here can be as ‘outrageous’ as you want it to be as long as you are able to back it up with reasonable arguments. Remember, the JLI website clearly declares itself to be, ‘ not a safe space, but a courteous one ’.

How competitive is the JLI Essay Competition?

In 2021, the competition received 4000 entries from 101 countries. Given that there is only one prize winner from each category, this makes this a very competitive opportunity. However, because categories have a different number of applicants, some categories are more competitive than others. One strategy to win could be to focus on fields with fewer submissions like Theology.

There are also a relatively significant number of students who receive commendations called “high commendation.” In the psychology field, for example, about 80 students received a commendation in 2022. At the same time, keep in mind that the number of students shortlisted and invited to Oxford for an academic conference is fairly high and varies by subject. For instance, Theology had around 50 people shortlisted in 2021 whereas Economics had 238 . We, at Lumiere, estimate that approximately 10% of entries of each category make it to the shortlisting stage.

How will your essay be judged?

The essays will be judged on your understanding of the discipline, quality of argumentation and evidence, and writing style. Let’s look at excerpts from various winning essays to see what this looks like in practice.

Level of knowledge and understanding of the relevant material: Differentiating your essay from casual musing requires you to demonstrate knowledge of your discipline. One way to do that is by establishing familiarity with relevant literature and integrating it well into their essay. The winning essay of the 2020 Psychology Prize is a good example of how to do this: “People not only interpret facts in a self-serving way when it comes to their health and well-being; research also demonstrates that we engage in motivated reasoning if the facts challenge our personal beliefs, and essentially, our moral valuation and present understanding of the world. For example, Ditto and Liu showed a link between people’s assessment of facts and their moral convictions” By talking about motivated reasoning in the broader literature, the author can show they are well-versed in the important developments in the field.

Competent use of evidence: In your essay, there are different ways to use evidence effectively. One such way involves backing your argument with results from previous studies . The 2020 Third Place essay in economics shows us what this looks like in practice: “Moreover, this can even be extended to PTSD, where an investigation carried out by Italian doctor G. P. Fichera, led to the conclusion that 13% of the sampling units were likely to have this condition. Initiating economic analysis here, this illustrates that the cost of embarking on this unlawful activity, given the monumental repercussions if caught, is not equal to the costs to society...” The study by G.P. Fichera is used to strengthen the author’s claim on the social costs of crime and give it more weight.

Structure, writing style, and persuasive force: A good argument that is persuasive rarely involves merely backing your claim with good evidence and reasoning. Delivering it in an impactful way is also very important. Let’s see how the winner of the 2020 Law Prize does this: “Slavery still exists, but now it applies to women and its name in prostitution”, wrote Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. Hugo’s portrayal of Fantine under the archetype of a fallen woman forced into prostitution by the most unfortunate of circumstances cannot be more jarringly different from the empowerment-seeking sex workers seen today, highlighting the wide-ranging nuances associated with commercial sex and its implications on the women in the trade. Yet, would Hugo have supported a law prohibiting the selling of sex for the protection of Fantine’s rights?” The use of Victor Hugo in the first line of the essay gives it a literary flair and enhances the impact of the delivery of the argument. Similarly, the rhetorical question, in the end, adds to the literary dimension of the argument. Weaving literary and argumentative skills in a single essay is commendable and something that the institute also recognizes.

Quality of argumentation: Finally, the quality of your argument depends on capturing the various elements mentioned above seamlessly . The third place in theology (2020) does this elegantly while describing bin-Laden’s faulty and selective use of religious verses to commit violence: “He engages in the decontextualization and truncation of Qur'anic verses to manipulate and convince, which dissociates the fatwas from bonafide Islam. For example, in his 1996 fatwa, he quotes the Sword verse but deliberately omits the aforementioned half of the Ayat that calls for mercy. bin-Laden’s intention is not interpretive veracity, but the indoctrination of his followers.” The author’s claim is that bin-Laden lacks religious integrity and thus should not be taken seriously, especially given the content of his messages. To strengthen his argument, he uses actual incidents to dissect this display of faulty reasoning.

These excerpts are great examples of the kind of work you should keep in mind when writing your own draft.

6 Winning Tips from Lumiere

Focus on your essay structure and flow: If logic and argumentation are your guns in this competition, a smooth flow is your bullet. What does a smooth flow mean? It means that the reader should be able to follow your chain of reasoning with ease. This is especially true for essays that explore abstract themes. Let’s see this in detail with the example of a winning philosophy essay. “However, if society were the moral standard, an individual is subjected to circumstantial moral luck concerning whether the rules of the society are good or evil (e.g., 2019 Geneva vs. 1939 Munich). On the other hand, contracts cannot be the standard because people are ignorant of their being under a moral contractual obligation, when, unlike law, it is impossible to be under a contract without being aware. Thus, given the shortcomings of other alternatives, human virtue is the ideal moral norm.” To establish human virtue as the ideal norm, the author points out limitations in society and contracts, leaving out human virtue as the ideal one. Even if you are not familiar with philosophy, you might still be able to follow the reasoning here. This is a great example of the kind of clarity and logical coherence that you should strive for.

Ground your arguments in a solid theoretical framework : Your essay requires you to have well-developed arguments. However, these arguments need to be grounded in academic theory to give them substance and differentiate them from casual opinions. Let me illustrate this with an example of the essay that won second place in the politics category in 2020. “Normatively, the moral authority of governments can be justified on a purely associative basis: citizens have an inherent obligation to obey the state they were born into. As Dworkin argued, “Political association, like family or friendship and other forms of association more local and intimate, is itself pregnant of obligation” (Dworkin). Similar to a family unit where children owe duties to their parents by virtue of being born into that family regardless of their consent, citizens acquire obligations to obey political authority by virtue of being born into a state.” Here, the author is trying to make a point about the nature of political obligation. However, the core of his argument is not the strength of his own reasoning, but the ability to back his reasoning with prior literature. By quoting Dworkin, he includes important scholars of western political thought to give more weight to his arguments. It also displays thorough research on the part of the author to acquire the necessary intellectual tools to write this paper.

The methodology is more important than the conclusion: The 2020 history winners came to opposite conclusions in their essays on whether a strong state hampers or encourages economic growth. While one of them argued that political strength hinders growth when compared to laissez-faire, the other argues that the state is a prerequisite for economic growth . This reflects JLI’s commitment to your reasoning and substantiation instead of the ultimate opinion. The lesson: Don’t be afraid to be bold! Just make sure you are able to back it up.

Establish your framework well: A paragraph (or two) that is able to succinctly describe your methodology, core arguments, and the reasoning behind them displays academic sophistication. A case in point is the introduction of 2019’s Philosophy winner: “To answer the question, we need to construct a method that measures progress in philosophy. I seek to achieve this by asserting that, in philosophy, a certain degree of falsification is achievable. Utilizing philosophical inquiry and thought experiments, we can rationally assess the logical validity of theories and assign “true” and “false” status to philosophical thoughts. With this in mind, I propose to employ the fourth process of the Popperian model of progress…Utilizing these two conditions, I contend that Aristotelian virtue ethics was progress from Kantian ethics and utilitarianism.” Having a framework like this early on gives you a blueprint for what is in the essay and makes it easier for the reader to follow the reasoning. It also helps you as a writer since distilling down your core argument into a paragraph ensures that the first principles of your essay are well established.

Read essays of previous winners: Do this and you will start seeing some patterns in the winning essays. In economics, this might be the ability to present a multidimensional argument and substantiating it with data-backed research. In theology, this might be your critical analysis of religious texts .

Find a mentor: Philosophical logic and argumentation are rarely taught at the high school level. Guidance from an external mentor can fill this academic void by pointing out logical inconsistencies in your arguments and giving critical feedback on your essay. Another important benefit of having a mentor is that it will help you in understanding the heavy literature that is often a key part of the writing/research process in this competition. As we have already seen above, having a strong theoretical framework is crucial in this competition. A mentor can make this process smoother.

Lumiere Research Scholar Program

If you’re looking for a mentor to do an essay contest like John Locke or want to build your own independent research paper, then consider applying to the Lumiere Research Scholar Program . Last year over 2100 students applied for about 500 spots in the program. You can find the application form here.

You can see our admission results here for our students.

Manas is a publication strategy associate at Lumiere Education. He studied public policy and interactive media at NYU and has experience in education consulting.

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Feeling overwhelmed with academic demands? Don't worry, I've got you covered! I just found a website that provides assistance with research papers. From topic https://www.phdresearchproposal.org/ selection to formatting, they offer comprehensive support throughout the writing process. Say goodbye to academic stress!

Essay  COMPETITION

2024 global essay prize.

The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style. Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.

Entering an essay in our competition can build knowledge, and refine skills of argumentation. It also gives students the chance to have their work assessed by experts. All of our essay prizes are judged by a panel of senior academics drawn from leading universities including Oxford and Princeton, under the leadership of the Chairman of Examiners, former Cambridge philosopher, Dr Jamie Whyte.

The judges will choose their favourite essay from each of seven subject categories - Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law - and then select the winner of the Grand Prize for the best entry in any subject. There is also a separate prize awarded for the best essay in the junior category, for under 15s.

Q1. Do we have any good reasons to trust our moral intuition?

Q2. Do girls have a (moral) right to compete in sporting contests that exclude boys?

Q3. Should I be held responsible for what I believe?

Q1. Is there such a thing as too much democracy?

Q2. Is peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip possible?

Q3. When is compliance complicity?

Q1. What is the optimal global population?  

Q2. Accurate news reporting is a public good. Does it follow that news agencies should be funded from taxation?

Q3. Do successful business people benefit others when making their money, when spending it, both, or neither?

Q1. Why was sustained economic growth so rare before the later 18th century and why did this change?

Q2. Has music ever significantly changed the course of history?

Q3. Why do civilisations collapse? Is our civilisation in danger?

Q1. When, if ever, should a company be permitted to refuse to do business with a person because of that person’s public statements?

Q2. In the last five years British police have arrested several thousand people for things they posted on social media. Is the UK becoming a police state?

Q3. Your parents say that 11pm is your bedtime. But they don’t punish you if you don’t go to bed by 11pm. Is 11pm really your bedtime?

Q1. According to a study by four British universities, for each 16-point increase in IQ, the likelihood of getting married increases by 35% for a man but decreases by 40% for a woman. Why? 

Q2. There is an unprecedented epidemic of depression and anxiety among young people. Can we fix this? How?

Q3. What is the difference between a psychiatric illness and a character flaw?

Q1. “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” What could the speaker mean by “spiritual”?

Q2. Is it reasonable to thank God for protection from some natural harm if He is responsible for causing the harm?

Q3. Does God reward those who believe in him? If so, why?

JUNIOR prize

Q1. Does winning a free and fair election automatically confer a mandate for governing?

Q2. Has the anti-racism movement reduced racism?

Q3. Is there life after death?

Q4. How did it happen that governments came to own and run most high schools, while leaving food production to private enterprise? 

Q5. When will advancing technology make most of us unemployable? What should we do about this?

Q6. Should we trust fourteen-year-olds to make decisions about their own bodies? 

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS & FURTHER DETAILS

Please read the following carefully.

Entry to the John Locke Institute Essay Competition 2024 is open to students from any country.

Registration  

Only candidates who registered before the registration deadline of Friday, 31 May 2024 may enter this year's competition.

All entries must be submitted by 11.59 pm BST on  the submission deadline: Sunday, 30 June 2024 .  Candidates must be eighteen years old, or younger, on that date. (Candidates for the Junior Prize must be fourteen years old, or younger, on that date.)

Entry is free.

Each essay must address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, endnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration). 

The filename of your pdf must be in this format: FirstName-LastName-Category-QuestionNumber.pdf; so, for instance, Alexander Popham would submit his answer to question 2 in the Psychology category with the following file name:

Alexander-Popham-Psychology-2.pdf

Essays with filenames which are not in this format will be rejected.

The candidate's name should NOT appear within the document itself. 

Candidates should NOT add footnotes. They may, however, add endnotes and/or a Bibliography that is clearly titled as such.

Each candidate will be required to provide the email address of an academic referee who is familiar with the candidate's written academic work. This should be a school teacher, if possible, or another responsible adult who is not a relation of the candidate. The John Locke Institute will email referees to verify that the essays submitted are indeed the original work of the candidates.

Submissions may be made as soon as registration opens in April. We recommend that you submit your essay well in advance of th e deadline to avoid any last-minute complications.

Acceptance of your essay depends on your granting us permission to use your data for the purposes of receiving and processing your entry as well as communicating with you about the Awards Ceremony Dinner, the academic conference for essay competition finalists, and other events and programmes of the John Locke Institute and its associated entities.  

Late entries

If for any reason you miss the 30 June deadline you will have an opportunity to make a late entry, under two conditions:

a) A late entry fee of 20.00 USD must be paid by credit card within twenty-four hours of the original deadline; and

b) Your essay must be submitted  before 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 10 July 2024.

To pay for late entry, a registrant need only log into his or her account, select the relevant option and provide the requested payment information.

Our grading system is proprietary. Essayists may be asked to discuss their entry with a member of the John Locke Institute’s faculty. We use various means to identify plagiarism, contract cheating, the use of AI and other forms of fraud . Our determinations in all such matters are final.

Essays will be judged on knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. The very best essays are likely to be those which would be capable of changing somebody's mind. Essays which ignore or fail to address the strongest objections and counter-arguments are unlikely to be successful .

Candidates are advised to answer the question as precisely and directly as possible.

The writers of the best essays will receive a commendation and be shortlisted for a prize. Writers of shortlisted essays will be notified by 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 31 July. They will also be invited to London for an invitation-only academic conference and awards dinner in September, where the prize-winners will be announced. Unlike the competition itself, the academic conference and awards dinner are not free. Please be aware that n obody is required to attend either the academic conference or the prize ceremony. You can win a prize without travelling to London.

All short-listed candidates, including prize-winners, will be able to download eCertificates that acknowledge their achievement. If you win First, Second or Third Prize, and you travel to London for the ceremony, you will receive a signed certificate. 

There is a prize for the best essay in each category. The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior category, is a scholarship worth US$2000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute programme, and the essays will be published on the Institute's website. Prize-giving ceremonies will take place in London, at which winners and runners-up will be able to meet some of the judges and other faculty members of the John Locke Institute. Family, friends, and teachers are also welcome.

The candidate who submits the best essay overall will be awarded an honorary John Locke Institute Junior Fellowship, which comes with a US$10,000 scholarship to attend one or more of our summer schools and/or visiting scholars programmes. 

The judges' decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

R egistration opens: 1 April, 2024.

Registration deadline: 31 May, 2024. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)

Submission deadline: 30 June, 2024.

Late entry deadline: 10 July, 2024. (Late entries are subject to a 20.00 USD charge, payable by 1 July.)

Notification of short-listed essayists: 31 July, 2024.

Academic conference: 20 - 22 September, 2024.

Awards dinner: 21 September, 2024.

Any queries regarding the essay competition should be sent to [email protected] . Please be aware that, due to the large volume of correspondence we receive, we cannot guarantee to answer every query. In particular, regrettably, we are unable to respond to questions whose answers can be found on our website.

If you would like to receive helpful tips  from our examiners about what makes for a winning essay or reminders of upcoming key dates for the 2024  essay competition, please provide your email here to be added to our contact list. .

Thanks for subscribing!

The John Locke Institute's Global Essay Prize is acknowledged as the world's most prestigious essay competition. 

We welcome tens of thousands of submissions from ambitious students in more than 150 countries, and our examiners - including distinguished philosophers, political scientists, economists, historians, psychologists, theologians, and legal scholars - read and carefully assess every entry. 

I encourage you to register for this competition, not only for the hope of winning a prize or commendation, and not only for the chance to join the very best contestants at our academic conference and gala ceremony in London, but equally for the opportunity to engage in the serious scholarly enterprise of researching, reflecting on, writing about, and editing an answer to one of the important and provocative questions in this year's Global Essay Prize. 

We believe that the skills you will acquire in the process will make you a better thinker and a more effective advocate for the ideas that matter most to you.

I hope to see you in September!

Best wishes,

Jamie Whyte, Ph.D. (C ANTAB ) 

Chairman of Examiners

Correcting the Record Regarding My Essay in The Free Press

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Last week, I wrote an opinion piece in The Free Press on perverse incentives in scientific publishing.

I described the strong incentives researchers face to publish high-profile papers and how those incentives naturally push researchers to mold their research questions and the presentation of work so that they are palatable to ‘high-impact’ journals.

I also described how I believe high-profile papers put an inordinate focus on the negative impacts of climate change and underemphasize other relevant areas, especially the study of societal resilience to climate.

I think that this is a problem because I believe that a hyper-focus on seeking out and highlighting negative impacts of climate change represents a lost opportunity to study practical on-the-ground solutions to climate-related problems. Hence, I argued that the incentives facing researchers are not aligned with the production of the most useful knowledge for society.

I have written about these problems in the scientific literature many times before, but this time, I used my own paper on wildfires as an example. My aim was to simultaneously criticize myself and criticize a broader system.

In response, I received a great deal of support for my editorial privately from other Ph.D. researchers who agree with me, are exasperated, and would like to see change, and a lot of very negative public reaction from high-profile climate researchers and journalists, some of whom have characterized my public airing of decisions that I made to increase the likelihood of the publication of my Nature paper as a “ scandal .”

Much of the public criticism revolves around highly misleading (and in some cases patently false) claims about the research approach that I took in designing the study and what then transpired during the peer review process. One outlet falsely stated that I manipulated data . The editor-in-chief of Nature incorrectly suggested that peer reviewers instructed me to include changes in non-climate factors in our wildfire projections.

There is much more to be said about why I chose to write my essay and why the issues I raise are important for both the integrity of the climate science endeavor and the efficacy of societal efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. But here I address specifically the false and misleading claims that have been made about my Nature paper and the peer-review process.

Was the publication of my Nature paper, followed by my essay in The Free Press, a hoax or a sting operation?

Absolutely not. When I started working on what would become my Nature paper, I had no intention of writing anything about the publication process. I started doing wildfire research in 2019, and I realized there was an opportunity for a high-profile paper in the fall of 2021. I followed this pathway, shaping the research question and the presentation of the research for a high-profile paper, and submitted it to Nature in the summer of 2022.

I had been bothered by what I saw as strong biases in the scientific literature for a long time, and I started thinking and writing more about this problem as the paper was going through peer review. I gradually realized that I was applying a major double standard, criticizing other researchers’ papers but not my own. Over the course of this past year, and as the Nature paper was getting over the finish line, I decided to write a piece critiquing it. I did not think that my experience was anything exceptional, so I discussed the general incentives facing climate impact researchers and how these incentives make research less useful than it could be.

Did you manipulate data in order to ensure the publication of your paper?

As I state in the essay, I chose to frame the research question in my paper narrowly, to focus only on the contribution that climate change was making to wildfire behavior. In doing so, my methodology left out (held constant) the myriad of causal factors that affect wildfire behavior (e.g., non-climate factors like human ignition patterns and fuel loads) and could be altered in the future to mitigate wildfire danger. The paper is honest about leaving those factors out, so there is nothing explicitly wrong with the paper itself. However, at the end of the day, what gets communicated to the public is just part of the story and not the full truth .

This has been standard practice in published peer-reviewed literature that attempts to quantify the impact that climate change is having or will have on a wide range of weather-related phenomena and the resulting impacts that those phenomena have upon society. My Free Press essay simply acknowledged that I, like many others, make these choices, sometimes believing that doing so increases the likelihood that high-impact journals would be interested in the research.

Do you stand by the research findings in your Nature paper? Should it be retracted?

I do stand by the research findings, and there is no basis for retracting the paper on its methods or merits. As I have consistently said, I am proud of the research overall, and I think it significantly advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior. There is nothing explicitly wrong with the paper, and it follows the regular conventions of many other papers. My point is simply that molding the presentation of the research for a high-impact journal made it less useful than it could have been.

Did editors or reviewers pressure you into highlighting climate change in your paper?

My paper was conceived from the outset to focus exclusively on climate change's impact on wildfire behavior partially because I thought that would increase its chance of publication in a high-profile journal. I did not claim that editors or reviewers pressured me into highlighting climate change after the submission of the paper. My editorial is about how high-profile venues display preferences for certain research results, and that indirectly solicits research that is customized to those preferences.

Did reviewers ask you to include other non-climate factors in your wildfire projections?

Nowhere in the peer review process did reviewers challenge the usefulness of focusing solely on the impact of climate change when projecting long-term changes in wildfire behavior. The main non-climate factors that I said were important (but held constant) in my essay were ignition patterns and fuel loads. Reviewers brought up ignitions a single time, and fuel loads came up six times. In all cases, reviewers raised these factors in relation to questions about whether my methodology was sufficiently robust to accurately quantify the contribution of climate factors to wildfire growth , not to tell us that we should expand our methodology to include changes in these other non-climate factors in our long-term projections.

Let’s go over them all:

From page 7 of the peer review document ,

“The second aspect that is a concern is the use of wildfire growth as the key variable. As the authors acknowledge, there are numerous factors that play a confounding role in wildfire growth that are not directly accounted for in this study (L37-51). Vegetation type (fuel), ignitions ( lightning and people), fire management activities ( direct and indirect suppression, prescribed fire, policies such as fire bans and forest closures) and fire load.”

The reviewer is expressing concern that the “ confounding ” factors will make it difficult for us to quantify the influence of temperature on wildfire growth in our historical dataset (a relationship we can then use later for our climate change projections). They are implying that it might be easier to quantify the influence of temperature on some other wildfire characteristic other than growth. They are not telling us that we should expand our methodology to include changes in these other non-climate factors in our projections.

In my reply, I pointed out that our models were able to predict wildfire growth well in our historical dataset, even without information on the confounding factors.

From page 8 of the peer review document,

“Did you consider using other fuel moisture variables such as 1 hour and 10 hour fuel that can be important is some fuel types ( grass and shrub etc.)”

“Fuel moisture variables” in this context are climate variables and do not refer to non-climate factors like fuel loads. The reviewer is suggesting ways to better quantify the impact of climate change on wildfires.

From page 9 in the peer review document,

“My main concern is on the robustness of the empirical models due to the extremely unbalanced samples for the binary response variables (extreme vs non-extreme fire days: 380 vs. 18,000) and the very small size for the occurrence samples, especially considering the diverse landscape in California in terms of fuel types and topography.”

The reviewer is concerned that there may not be enough samples of the extreme wildfire growth days that we are studying to get a good quantification of the influence of temperature in our historical dataset (a relationship we can then use later for projections). We demonstrate that the models have good predictive skill on out-of-sample data in our historical dataset.

From page 12 in the peer review document,

“1) The climate change scenario only includes temperature as input for the modified climate. However, changes in atmospheric humidity would also be highly relevant for predicting changes in VPD or fuel moisture.”

The reviewer is asking that we include another climate factor (absolute humidity) in our projections, not asking us to consider any non-climate factors in our projections.

In my response, I acknowledge that all climate variables other than temperature (and temperature’s influence on aridity) are held constant in the projections, and I bring up the fact that other non-climate factors are also held constant.

“We agree that climatic variables other than temperature are important for projecting changes in wildfire risk. In addition to absolute atmospheric humidity, other important variables include changes in precipitation, wind patterns, vegetation, snowpack, ignitions, antecedent fire activity, etc. Not to mention factors like changes in human population distribution, fuel breaks, land use, ignition patterns, firefighting tactics, forest management strategies, and long-term buildup of fuels.”

I further articulated my stance that the temperature signal dominates other climate variables in its influence on wildfire behavior, and that is why focusing on warming alone (and not other climate-related changes) was valid for representing the entirety of the influence of climate change.

“Accounting for changes in all of these variables and their potential interactions simultaneously is very difficult. This is precisely why we chose to use a methodology that addresses the much cleaner but more narrow question of what the influence of warming alone is on the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth. We believe that studying the influence of warming in isolation is valuable because temperature is the variable in the wildfire behavior triangle (Fig 1A) that is by far the most directly related to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and, thus, the most well-constrained in future projections. There is no consensus on even the expected direction of the change of many of the other relevant variables. We do not believe that absolute humidity is an exception to this, and thus it is just as justifiable to hold it constant as any of the other variables mentioned above. Support for this can be summarized with the following two points…”

This is all to say that if we can hold everything else constant in the projections, then there is no reason we should not also be able to hold absolute humidity constant. Further, it is an argument that temperature is sufficient to represent the influence of climate change. It is not an argument making the case that focusing solely on the impact of climate change is more useful than an expansive assessment that includes other non-climate factors.

Page 23 of the peer review document,

“Line 73 - It is worth mentioning that fuels including both fuel types, structure, and amount were held constant in addition to fuel moisture.”

The reviewer asks for us to state that fuel characteristics are held constant at a particular place in the manuscript (even though that is already stated in other places).

Page 26 of the peer review document,

“Lastly, area burned is influenced by many variables and I think that fire management effort is one that deserves some mention. Fire management effectiveness varies due to a number of factors, but fire load/resource availability is a key factor that could confound your results.”

The reviewer is expressing concern that fire management will make it more difficult for us to quantify the influence of temperature on wildfire growth in our historical dataset (a relationship we can then use later for our climate change projections). We address this by inserting a caveat.

Reviewers did not challenge the usefulness of focusing solely on the impact of climate change when calculating long-term changes in wildfire behavior in any of these discussions. Rather, they are focused on making sure the methodology is able to get an accurate quantification of the impact of climate change.

Wouldn't accounting for these other non-climate factors in your wildfire projections make your paper better and help it get published in Nature?

A paper that appropriately accounted for projections in other relevant non-climate factors would probably be inconclusive in even the direction of future wildfire change with uncertainty ranges that overlap with zero. That research - which is more useful research - would tell a much less clean story and would be less likely to be a high-profile paper. This is the sense in which ‘leaving out the full truth’ (other relevant causal factors) made the paper more compelling, which then makes it more worthy of a high-profile venue. This “positive results bias,” where researchers are more likely to submit, and editors are more likely to accept, results that demonstrate a clear significant relationship over an inconclusive one, is a well-known phenomenon .

To conclude

My aim is to highlight a problem and push for reform so that the incentives facing researchers are better aligned with what produces the most useful knowledge for society.

There are many reasonable reasons that climate researchers and journalists might disagree with my essay. Nature has published papers that push back against the narrow focus on climate impacts that I describe. I can’t say for certain that a paper focused more broadly on climate and non-climate factors would not have been published in Nature. And any criticism of climate science practice will assuredly be amplified by right-wing media eager to promote skepticism about climate change.

But the specific claims above, which have been widely repeated and have constituted much of the effort to ignore the issues I have raised, are false and misleading.

More broadly, I’d like to push for changes in attitudes and norms from researchers to institutions to journals and the media. My main thrust is simply that research on climate and society should not have such an inordinate focus on identifying and highlighting negative climate impacts at the expense of studying the effectiveness of solutions that can help people today. I am interested in hearing ideas and forming networks of people who would also like to see reform in this direction, and I hope, perhaps unrealistically, that those determined to loudly discredit the concerns I have raised will consider whether doing so, over the long term, really serves the credibility of the climate science enterprise.

Patrick Brown

Patrick is a Co-Director of the Climate and Energy Team at The Breakthrough Institute and is also an adjunct faculty member (lecturer) in the Energy Policy and Climate Program at Johns Hopkins University.

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Example Of Essay On An Institution.

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Law , Literature , Sociology , Human , Organization , Behavior , Development , Society

Words: 1700

Published: 01/18/2020

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The use of the term institution is mostly widespread in the social science discipline, in reflection of, economic, political, marriage, educational, geographical and philosophical institutions among many others (Helmke 3). The term has a long history in usage that dates from 1725 and its definition varies the social background that it explains at a given time. In an attempt to provide a comprehensive and detailed definition of an institution, it is essential to find out their roles and contexts. In typical economic scrutiny, an institution can be explained as a set of rules designed to serve an economic interest by enhancing the actions or behavior of individuals. In a sociological perspective, an institution can be termed as a set of procedures that serve the concern of the actors. Such must form stable systems that lead to the formation of hierarchically ranked individuals. In a psychological perspective, an institution may be seen as a promotion and integration of different personalities with a common objective (Rawls 15). Overall, the role of an institution is determined by the objective of its formation; that is if designed to integrate individual behavior to societal customs, then may be considered as a social institution etc. The institution formed by a group of individuals is a factor of the need be it societal, psychological or economical. Most scholars tend to define institutions based on their roles. For instance financial institutions are defined based on the financial or banking aspect that is their key performance objective. Endless disputes on the definition of institutions are still significant from sociologists, philosophers and other learners. However, one thing that remains common amongst the many definitions brought forward by different writes is the concept of an established law that regulates the running of an institution. Different theories that try to explain what an institution entails have the commonality of integrated regulations that facilitate growth and cohesion in an institution. The English thesaurus has an institution as a noun that implies an organization that provides a residential care in meeting individuals or societal needs. It is founded on a religious, educational, economical, social, and political or a similar purpose. It involves different individuals coming together, from a felt need, to accomplish a common goal. This definition identifies the different types of institutions that are formed with a common purpose. These includes political institutions, social, learning, economic, environmental etc. There lacks a single or universal agreed definition of an institution. However, different schools of thought assert that institutions are social systems and structures composed of normative, cultural-cognitive and regulative elements. These elements, together with resources and associated activities, provide a stable social life. Institutions are transmissions of a variety of carriers that include relations, symbolic interactions, routines and artifacts. They operate under different levels of jurisdictions from a local perspective to a regional or world system. In basic terms, an institution can be defined as an organization, foundation, arrangement or a society that devotes to the promotion of a program. The aim of the institution is usually focused to benefit the public or members of the institution. An institution is an establishment under a custom or different customs or laws that are consistent in regulation of individual pattern of behavior. The norms in an institution are self regulating and acceptable to the members of the institution. In a more generalized term, an institution can be defined as a system of prevalent societal rules that build or structure social interrelations and interactions. Gretchen Helmke is amongst sociological scholars who view institutions self enforcing organizations that form societal structures. In his quest to come up with a comprehensible definition of an institution, the author divides an institution into two different components; informal and formal institutions (Helmke 5). The author goes ahead to define a formal institution as procedures, regulations and rules that are created, enforced and communicated through different channels. These rules are acceptable to the society in question and are enforced in fulfilling structures such that they are not biased or oppressive to some class while favoring other classes. Informal institutions are viewed, by this author, as socially shared laws, which are written, created, enforced and communicated (Helmke 6). Informal institutions are regarded as those groupings or organizations that are not officially sanctioned and mostly intended to develop behavior in a society. The rules governing an institution are binding, and lack of adherence leads to different punishments that may include facing criminal law, physical punishments, loss of employment and social disapproval. John Rawls is also another theorist that tries to come up with a detailed definition of an institution. The author defines an institution as a public system of laws or rules which define rights and duties of offices and positions (Rawls 7). The author expresses an institution in two different perspectives; as an abstract and as a realization of thought and conduct to persons at a certain place or time. As an abstract, the author views an institution as a form of conduct articulated by a structure of rules. These definitions are, however, criticized as ambiguous to which is justifiable or unjustifiable. An institution exists at a certain time and place if only the intended actions are carried out in accord to the public understanding and set rules. In his efforts, Douglas Cecil views an institution as the rules that govern a society or as human constraints that shape human and societal interactions. The structures of an institution form the base of societal evolvement in time, and, therefore, act as historical literature of change (North 3). The author regards institutions as structures that provide certainty in everyday life. The structures guide human interaction and as a guide to human behavior. An institution in this case is seen as a form of restriction towards certain behavior and a constraint towards intended behavior. The constrictions come with a structure of rules and laws that are binding in development of the intended human behavior that shape human interaction. In all these definitions, the key concept that is brought forward is the element of social order and governing of human behavior in a community (North 6). There is the element of social purpose, intentions to mediate set rules and a group of individuals. The term institution, therefore, can be applied to essential behavioral patterns and valued customs that shape a society, an organization or a company. Although, institutions are deliberately formed by people, their development in societies may be regarded as instant. This is in the senses that as institutions arise, develop or function; they go beyond the conscious intentions. They form other social interactions that continue to shape behavior, culture, customs and individual habits. A clear example can be derived from the growth in banking and financial institutions. Many banking institutions are developed as a result of going beyond the original intentions of the initial plan. The development of commercial banks results from growth in ideas from the public financial institutions to more privatized institutions which later act as competitors. In defining an institution, there is the need of differentiating an institution, organization and an association (Rawls 8). In defining the term, the concept of an organization is almost inevitable. However, the two terms reflect different aspects, which complement each other. An institution is not an organization rather it is formed from an organization of individuals with a common goal. An organization can be expressed as a social arrangement which aims at pursuing collective goals. Unlike an institution, an organization controls its performance and has its own boundaries that separate it from the immediate surroundings. A good example of an organization is the World Health Organization. To differentiate an organization with an institution is the concept of custom and purpose. An organization performs diverse purposes that may not suit in a society but benefit other communities. Contrary, the formation of an institution is based on customs and intends to pursue a societal interest. A good example of an institution is a University like Oxford University. An institution can develop from an organization whilst organizations from an institution are formal without relations to customs. An institution is not an association; both are formed by human beings but with an individual or a social aspect. The formation of an institution involves a set of constituted laws, and regulations whilst associations are formed by a consensus by human beings. An association represents a human aspect while an institution is based from a societal aspect. Associations arise from a felt need or necessity while an institution evolves primarily. This explains why associations are not permanent while an institution is permanent. Once the need is accomplished, an association may be liquidated while the need of an institution continues to grow as an institution grows. For instance as financial institutions come up with new products, their need becomes more elaborate. In addition, an association represents membership while an institution denotes ways or modes of service. It is an institution that gives life to an association. The best definition of an institution is that which integrates the concepts of social order and human collectivity. It is that which determines the set rules and regulations that a set of individuals follows in accomplishing the objective of the formation of the structure. It is that which does not constrain or limit the chances of change that may influence its running. An institution, therefore, can be defined as a structure or mechanism of societal order and cooperation that governs behavior of a group of individuals. The individuals forming the institution are usually from a given human collectivity. An institution is identified with a social purpose, permanence, intentions, and a set of enforcing laws to govern behavior (Rawls 13).

Helmke, Gretchen. Information Instructions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006. Print. North, Douglass C. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2000. Print.

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Foundation for Victory

James Burnham was architect of the West's Cold War victory.

Conventional history credits American diplomat George F. Kennan’s strategy of containment, as set forth in his Long Telegram from Moscow in 1946 and his “X” article in Foreign Affairs in 1947, for maintaining the global balance of power while Soviet power, in Kennan’s words, “mellowed” or “broke-up.” But that’s only half the story. It is now clear that the Soviet Empire mellowed and broke-up in the late 1980s because of the West’s sustained pressure—economic, political, geopolitical, military—during that decade. Kennan’s passive containment was superseded by Burnham’s offensive policy of liberation.

The origins of Burnham’s Cold War strategy can be traced to portions of his 1941 book The Managerial Revolution , a memorandum he wrote for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the spring of 1944 (later published in revised form in 1947’s The Struggle for the World ) and an article he wrote in Partisan Review in 1945 entitled “Lenin’s Heir.” In those works, Burnham, borrowing generously from the ideas and concepts of Sir Halford Mackinder, explained his view of the geopolitical structure within which the Cold War would be waged.

Burnham’s intellectual debt to Mackinder is often overlooked or downplayed, though Daniel Kelly devotes a few pages to it in his excellent biography of Burnham. Burnham’s admirers more often trace his intellectual approach to the Cold War, and to politics in general, to the writers and political philosophers that he analyzed in The Machiavellians (1943).

The Machiavellians , however, had very little to say about geopolitics or foreign policy. At most, it armed Burnham to approach the emerging Cold War with a practical sense of how statesmen wield power. As he later acknowledged, The Machiavellians taught him that it was only by abandoning ideology and focusing on the experience of history that he could fully understand the world and man.

Burnham didn’t mention Mackinder in The Managerial Revolution but his description therein of the world’s geographic centers of power was reminiscent of Mackinder’s 1904 paper “The Geographical Pivot of History.” Mackinder’s “pivot state,” which he believed could serve as the strategic base for a world empire, occupied the northern-central core of Eurasia. Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution identified one of the competing centers of world power as the “Asiatic Center.”

When Burnham was writing The Managerial Revolution , Hitler’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe had invaded Soviet Russia and forced Soviet forces to retreat to the outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov. A German victory appeared imminent. Burnham foresaw, therefore, the possible break-up of Soviet power “with the western half gravitating toward [Europe]…and the eastern toward the Asiatic [Center].” More presciently, Burnham thought the war would result in the British Empire’s dissolution and its replacement as the “holder” of the global balance of power by the United States.

By 1944, however, it was evident that the Soviet Union would emerge victorious and dominate Burnham’s “Asiatic Center.” Burnham was then working as an analyst for the OSS, the CIA’s wartime predecessor. In the spring of 1944, he wrote a classified analysis of Soviet postwar goals, later published in The Struggle for the World .

Burnham sensed that what came to be called the Cold War actually started before the Second World War ended. Soviet forces and their proxies fought with an eye on the postwar settlement. Winston Churchill and William Bullitt, among others, urged President Roosevelt to do likewise, but FDR ignored their advice.

Burnham wrote his OSS paper with the assumption that the United States was already at war with the Soviet Union, placing the struggle within the context of geopolitics. Acknowledging his intellectual debt to Mackinder, Burnham wrote that the Soviet Union controlled the “inner Heartland” of “Central Eurasia,” and sought to dominate the Eurasian landmass. “Geographically, strategically,” Burnham warned, “Eurasia encircles America, overwhelms it.” He concluded that if the Soviets “succeed in extending their full direct control to the Atlantic, and in maintaining or extending their position on the Pacific, the odds on their victory would advance close to certainty.”

A year later in “Lenin’s Heir,” Burnham described the Soviet geopolitical threat to Eurasia: “Starting from the…core of the Eurasian heartland, the Soviet power…flows outward, west into Europe, south into the Near East, east into China, already lapping the shores of the Atlantic, the Yellow and China Seas, the Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf.”  

Burnham repeated this geopolitical analysis in his Cold War trilogy: The Struggle for the World (1947), The Coming Defeat of Communism (1949), and Containment or Liberation? (1952). In those books and his National Review columns, Burnham outlined the strategy of “liberation” or “rollback” that Ronald Reagan implemented during the 1980s.

Burnham acknowledged that containment was a necessary first step in winning the Cold War, but it was too defensive to achieve victory. U.S. policy, he wrote, should seek to “penetrate the communist fortress” and “reverse the direction of the thrust from the Heartland.” Our policy should “undermine communist power in East Europe, northern Iran, Afghanistan, Manchuria, northern Korea and China.” The Western powers, Burnham argued, should launch a subversive political, economic, cultural, and propaganda offensive against the Soviet Union. Such a strategy would result in putting the Soviets “on the political defensive…. The walls of their strategic Eurasian fortress…would begin to crumble. The internal Soviet difficulties, economic and social, would be fed a rich medium in which to multiply.”

Moreover, the West had allies within the Soviet Empire. “[T]he smashing of communism,” Burnham wrote, “should be accomplished from within, rather than by a war from the outside.” When the peoples and nations of the Soviet Empire “have rid themselves of their communist masters,” Burnham predicted, “we will find it easy enough to solve the now unanswerable riddle of ‘how to get along with Russia.’”

Two years later (in The Coming Defeat of Communism ) Burnham called for a broad and sustained propaganda offensive that would declare that the United States and the West stood against communist totalitarianism, and for individual liberty and institutional restraints on power.                  

U.S. policy, Burnham argued, should attempt to cultivate allies within the Soviet bloc—the Catholic Church, Muslim populations, political dissidents, and nationalist forces that yearned to break free of the Soviet yoke. He suggested that in “Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, the Roman Catholic community constitutes a powerful Resistance element” that could be used to undermine Soviet rule. This would include covertly supplying weapons and other assistance to any armed resistance forces within the Soviet Empire. Burnham also urged Western policymakers to exploit divisions within the communist movement, supporting, at least temporarily, communist leaders who acted independent of Moscow.

The October 1949 communist victory in China’s civil war and China’s subsequent alliance with the Soviet Union added to the West’s strategic dilemma. The Sino-Soviet bloc controlled Mackinder’s Heartland, Eastern Europe, and much of central Asia. In Containment or Liberation? , Burnham warned that “If the communists succeed in consolidating what they have already conquered, then their complete world victory is certain.” “[T]he policy of containment,” he continued, “even if 100% successful, is a formula for Soviet victory.”

Hence the need for a policy of liberation—a political warfare strategy designed to exploit fissures within the Soviet Empire. “Its goal,” Burnham explained, “is freedom for the peoples and nations now enslaved by the Russian-centered Soviet state system—freedom for all peoples and nations now under communist domination, including the Russian people.” To achieve victory in the Cold War, Soviet control of Eastern Europe and its alliance with China had to end.

Between 1955 and 1978 Burnham used his column in National Review to advocate for the policy of liberation, even as each successive presidential administration adhered to containment. Eisenhower used the rhetoric of liberation but settled for containment in Korea, East Germany, and Hungary in the 1950s. Kennedy also substituted the rhetoric of freedom for action as the Soviets and their allies constructed the Berlin Wall, placed offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba, and supplied weapons and advisers to communist forces in Vietnam without endangering any territory of their empire.

 A frustrated Burnham described what he later called the “strategic prison of containment” in Suicide of the West (1964). The Soviets, he wrote, divided the world into the “the “zone of peace” and the “zone of war.”

“The zone of peace” means the region that is already subject to communist rule; and the label signifies that within their region the communists will not permit any political tendency, violent or non-violent, whether purely internal or assisted from without, to challenge their rule. “The zone of war” is the region where communist rule is not yet, but in due course will be, established; and within the zone of war the communists promote, assist and where possible lead political tendencies, violent or non-violent, democratic or revolutionary, that operate against non-communist rule.

Burnham’s peace zone/war zone dichotomy prefigured the Brezhnev Doctrine that manifested itself four years later in Czechoslovakia, and that acted as a self-imposed restraint on U.S. military operations during the war in Southeast Asia, resulting in our ignominious defeat (which Burnham predicted in a series of prescient National Review columns).

Though Burnham was a critic of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of détente, he recognized the geopolitical value of the opening to China. The Sino-Soviet split ensured the geopolitical pluralism of Asia, and Sino-U.S. cooperation added to the strength of containment. But it did not translate into victory in the Cold War. Victory, as Burnham repeatedly wrote, required an offensive strategy.  

During the 1980s, President Reagan signed national security directives and implemented policies that effectively changed U.S. strategy from containment to liberation. He used propaganda, support for resistance movements within the Soviet Empire, economic pressures, and cooperation with the Vatican to foster and exploit Soviet vulnerabilities in Eastern Europe and within Russia itself. He publicly called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” and predicted that the West would transcend communism instead of containing it. Late in his presidency he challenged the Soviet leadership to tear down the Berlin Wall. Shortly after Reagan left office, the Wall came down and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe collapsed. Burnham was vindicated.

Burnham did not live to see his policy of liberation succeed. He suffered a stroke in 1978 that prevented him from writing his National Review column. In 1983, President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Burnham died in 1987. His greatest achievement, writes The American Conservative ’s Robert Merry, was “producing a strategic vision that ultimately, as embraced by Reagan, became the foundation for victory” in the Cold War.

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Some thoughts on my queer and Sikh identities, and how they mesh and collide.

The Sunday Essay  is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.

S undays were exciting, as they promised crispy bread pakora and chai over Punjabi chatter. If I was lucky, there would be jelabi, an orange spiral of sweet goodness prepped in the hot, crowded kitchen. I’d gulp it down in a single bite, sitting under the paintings of martyrs being scalped and buried alive. 

Afterwards, I’d run into the kitchen with sticky hands and an empty plate. I could feel the heat on the hairs of my arms from the giant puddle of oil in the wok; hear the sound of metal clanging against heads of garlic; see the kind face of a man pouring more water into the refill zone and turbans shining under the fluorescent lighting. The langar hall promised a warm meal for all. 

My nani (maternal grandmother in Punjabi), with her round sunglasses and white shawls, hoisted me onto her knees to tell me stories of Sikhi and the origins of langar. Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the first Sikh guru of ten, was given 21 rupees to start a business. He met weary and tired religious travellers on his way to the city. He offered to give them money, but they said receiving money from a well-off man felt degrading. So Guru Nanak brought food and cooked it, sitting on the floor with the religious folks and exchanging stories. This created the tradition of langar, where we all sit together on the floor to symbolise our equality in God’s eyes. 

So we sit on blue mats, our feet equally cold in the heatless room. My father spends more time in the langar hall than in the prayer room. This is where he chats with the men he met in small Onehunga flats when they were starving migrants. Everyone is welcome to langar; for this purpose, the langar hall and kitchen are always separate from the worship room. There is no need to thank a God you do not believe in to accept our kindness. 

T he most significant act of devotion as a Sikh is to take care of the world around us, because we believe we are simultaneously part of God as well as God’s creation. Through cooking meals, donating money, volunteering and teaching children or elderly people, Sikhs are worshipping God. This act is called seva. 

At age 12, I followed my nani’s loose pastel scarf into the gurdwara (place of worship) when I noticed a group of elderly women, heads covered in devotion with bright scarves, reciting the Punjabi alphabet. Their voices sounded tender yet powerful, an elder again becoming a child. Nani explained that she was the only educated girl out of her six sisters. Despite nani’s desire to attend university, she felt unsafe being the only woman to attend the local campus. 

At home, I would ask my father how my dadi ( paternal grandmother) would reply to his letters when it cost a dollar for every minute he called home. She would ask a village girl to read it out loud to her, sipping chai in her pale and sunny home, the words a blur of jumbled letters. How strange for my religion to create a new text for the benefit of lower-caste people and women, only to leave generations of women uneducated in the name of culture. I imagined my nani as a girl, curled up in her grandmother’s bed with a stomach full of fresh milk, hearing bedtime stories of Sikh liberation. A light switched off and a promise of a better world tomorrow.

Our current guru is Guru Granth Sahib, a book written in Gurmukhi. All these bright scarves, spent in devotion to guru, they could not see. I pray for them, as they are a part of me; their joy at reading is mine. 

Through people’s acts of seva, I learnt how to read Gurmukhi. We often discussed religious stories, and I became fascinated with the concept of gender in Sikhi. God does not have a gender, as they (God) existed before the manmade idea of gender. God is formless, transcendent. We dance with them, we are them, we are a part of their creation, and if we align ourselves right with the prayers and avoidance of maya (illusions of the world like drugs, beauty standards, wealth and competition with one another) we could join them in the centre of the universe. 

In Sikhi, the word for God is ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ( pronounced wa-he-gu-roo) , translating to “ teacher of the air”. As we speak, we transmit knowledge; within this knowledge, God is present, guiding our hands gently. What is more genderfluid than the air itself? 

O n the other hand, my Sikh identity is at odds with my queerness. Sometimes, at parties, my shoe kicking into the dirt of West Auckland backyards, I’d make comments about God, and they would be met with dismissive laughter. Religion is a bit of a joke in queer communities, and after centuries of being at odds with one another, who can blame them? Religion and queerness mimic the patterns of an overdomineering mother, wishing to craft her child out of the clay from the lakeside, and a child with fast feet. Neither realise that they cannot exist without each other; in their moulding and destruction of one another, they create one another. 

Over the coffee table covered with Punjabi newsletters and biscuits, my nani laughed about a story of two women marrying. I often think of being a child, listening to my nana’s (maternal grandfather in Punjabi) prayer as the sun dips away. The gentle pull of his hands as he moves over the prayer book. The birds easing to sleep; the sweet scent of mothballs from my grandmother’s shawl. Queerness is a religion: a devotion to discovering oneself. Maybe it’s selfish to want more than one religion, to want a God and a girl to understand it too.

Since I was a child, sprinting through the hallways wearing a bandana and jeans instead of a salwar kameez with a dupatta, I knew I was different. My bisexuality often manifests as isolation from the right way of performing femininity. Men and women occupy different spaces in the temple, sitting opposite one another for cultural rather than religious reasons. In protest, I often followed my nana  to the men’s section; a long-haired girl wearing a loosely wrapped scarf with her boyish jumpers. 

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When I am in front of the guru, I remind myself that he knows who I am, as he has created me as much as I have created him. Gurnanak ( another way of saying Guru Nanak Dev Ji) often becomes an imaginary friend whenever I hear homophobic remarks in the gurdwara. I imagine his disbelief that we are still thinking about gender as a set of rules to follow – doesn’t this count as an illusion of the world? 

I often think of the twelve-year-old version of Gurnanak who refused to wear a religious string that only upper-caste boys were permitted to wear, his steely calmness when he explained, as a child, that he is not brought closer to God by pretending he is better than God’s other creations. 

While the challenges of Punjabi homophobia and transphobia exist, I have to remember that Sikhi is a religion created out of a warzone. I am resilient, both as a queer individual and as a Sikh. We transform the world, carving spaces of equality. In my home, there is always food for all, and gender is just an illusion we mess around with.

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Amna Khalid says institutions need to rethink DEI initiatives.

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Pushing back on DEI ‘orthodoxy’

Panelists support diversity efforts but worry that current model is too narrow, denying institutions the benefit of other voices, ideas

Nikki Rojas

Harvard Staff Writer

It’s time to take a harder look at the role of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in higher education.

That was the overall theme of a searing panel discussion at Smith Campus Center on Thursday. Titled “Academic Freedom, DEI, & the Future of Higher Education,” the event featured scholars specializing in law, history, politics, and diversity.

“The power of diversity for learning is irreplaceable,” said panelist Amna Khalid, associate professor of history at Carleton College in Minnesota. “It is incredible, and it is a value that I strongly believe in as someone who is the product of various educational systems.”

However, Khalid shared that she often finds herself at odds with the approach DEI practitioners take in higher education — an approach she termed “DEI Inc.”

Khalid wrote an opinion piece with Carlton colleague Jeffrey Aaron Snyder last year for the Chronicle of Higher Education. The essay, titled “ Yes, DEI Can Erode Academic Freedom. Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise ,” argues that under the logic of the prevailing DEI model, “Education is a product, students are consumers, and campus diversity is a customer-service issue that needs to be administered from the top down.”

All too often, Khalid said at the event, practitioners implement a “model underscored by a notion of harm and that students somehow need to be protected from harm.”

Jeannie Suk Gersen, John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, agreed with that assessment and said that people who object to DEI do not often equate it to the idea of diversity.

“It’s, in fact, a set of ideas that have become very narrowed to one specific orthodoxy about what diversity means, what equity and inclusion mean, so that it shuts out a whole bunch of other ideas about what diversity, equity, and inclusion may be,” Suk Gersen said.

The lone voice to advocate for a professionalized and accountable DEI workforce was Stacy Hawkins, a Rutgers University law professor and scholar of DEI.

“Perhaps it’s simply just the introduction of diversity into our institutions that’s going to create discomfort — that’s going to make it harder to have the same conversations, to do the same things, to say and behave in the same ways that we used to,” said Hawkins, who underscored the challenge of welcoming diverse students without diverse faculty. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a worthwhile exercise to try.”

Panelists also fielded questions on academic freedom and free speech, and whether DEI infringes on those rights.

DEI is “almost always wrong in the sense that it subverts classical liberal principles of the academic mission of open inquiry, truth seeking, knowledge creation, research, and debating ideas,” responded panelist Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.

He went on to quote Hanna Holborn Gray, former president of the University of Chicago, who once said: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.”

Shapiro proved the only panelist to argue for the total elimination of university DEI offices without replacing them with other structures designed to achieve diversity goals. Instead, he said that student affairs, compliance officers, and admissions should assume any responsibilities related to diversity.

Last week’s discussion was sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Civil Discourse Initiative , the Harvard College Intellectual Vitality Initiative , and the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics .

Also discussed were social media and the distorted views it surfaces on DEI.

Hawkins noted that DEI takes a real beating on the platforms, all while cancel culture is the true driver behind most modern outrage. “There is this heightened sense of awareness,” she said. “There’s this heightened sense of accountability. There is this heightened sense of threat. And this heightened sense of punitive action, all surrounding a larger cultural phenomenon that has nothing to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

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Jamelle Bouie

The Supreme Court Is Playing a Dangerous Game

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

If the chief currency of the Supreme Court is its legitimacy as an institution, then you can say with confidence that its account is as close to empty as it has been for a very long time.

Since the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nearly two years ago, its general approval with the public has taken a plunge. As recently as the last presidential election year, according to the Pew Research Center , 70 percent of Americans said they had a favorable view of the court. In the wake of Dobbs, that number dipped to 44 percent. Twenty-four percent of Democrats, according to Pew, said they approved of the Supreme Court.

In the latest 538 average , just over 52 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court, and around 40 percent approved.

Does the court know about its precipitous decline with much of the public? It’s hard to say. It’s easier to answer a related question: Does it care? If the recent actions of the conservative majority are any indication, the answer is no.

Over the past month, members of that majority have effectively rewritten the 14th Amendment to functionally shield Donald Trump from the constitutional consequences of his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6. They have taken up the former president’s tendentious argument that he is immune to criminal prosecution for all actions taken while in office — postponing a trial and potentially denying the public the right to know, before we go to the polls in November, whether he is a criminal in the eyes of the law.

Most recently, the court allowed the State of Texas, governed by a cadre of some of the most reactionary conservatives in the country, to carry out its own immigration policy in contravention of both federal officials and the general precedent that it’s the national government that handles the national border, not the states.

It is enough to make teachers and practitioners of constitutional law wonder, as my colleague Jesse Wegman noted last month , whether there’s any reason to play the table as though it were still on the level — to continue to treat the court as if it were anything other than a partisan political institution.

Here I want to raise an additional point. It’s not just the recent actions of the Supreme Court — including the corrupt conduct of some of its members — that jeopardize its legitimacy and political standing but also the circumstances under which this particular court majority came into being.

There is no way to look past the fact that five of the six members of the conservative majority on the Roberts court were nominated by presidents who entered office without the winds of a popular majority. John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the author of Dobbs, were placed on the court by George W. Bush, who entered office short of a popular vote win and on the strength of a contested Electoral College victory. The other three — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were nominated by Trump, who lost the national popular vote by more than two million ballots in 2016.

The three Trump justices bring additional baggage. Each one was nominated and confirmed in a show of partisan power politics. Gorsuch was the direct beneficiary of Senator Mitch McConnell’s blockade of the seat held by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died early in 2016. Republicans, led by McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, refused to give President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was the first time the Senate had simply ignored a president’s nominee for the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh was confirmed by a narrow vote of 50 to 48 (with one abstention and one absence) in the face of a credible accusation of sexual assault. Barrett was confirmed in flagrant violation of McConnell’s own rule for Supreme Court nominations. To block Garland, McConnell said that it was too close to an election to move forward; to confirm Barrett, McConnell said that it was too close to an election to wait.

There is no question that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs was the catalyst for its poor standing with the public. But the Dobbs majority owes itself to a garish Republican partisanship that almost certainly worked to weaken the political ground on which it stood in relation to the American people.

At the risk of sounding a little dramatic, you can draw a useful comparison between the Supreme Court’s current political position and the one it held on the eve of the 1860 presidential election.

It was not just the ruling itself that drove the ferocious opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which overturned the Missouri Compromise and wrote Black Americans out of the national community; it was the political entanglement of the Taney court with the slaveholding interests of the antebellum Democratic Party.

Six of the seven justices in the majority were Democratic appointments. The one who wasn’t, Samuel Nelson, was nominated by John Tyler, who was a Democrat before running on the Whig ticket with William Henry Harrison. Five of the justices were appointed by slave owners. At the time of the ruling, four of the justices were slave owners. And the chief justice, Roger Taney, was a strong Democratic partisan who was in close communication with James Buchanan, the incoming Democratic president, in the weeks before he issued the court’s ruling in 1857. Buchanan, in fact, had written to some of the justices urging them to issue a broad and comprehensive ruling that would settle the legal status of all Black Americans.

The Supreme Court, critics of the ruling said, was not trying to faithfully interpret the Constitution as much as it was acting on behalf of the so-called Slave Power, an alleged conspiracy of interests determined to take slavery national. The court, wrote a committee of the New York State Assembly in its report on the Dred Scott decision, was determined to “bring slavery within our borders, against our will, with all its unhallowed, demoralizing and blighted influences.”

The Supreme Court did not have the political legitimacy to issue a ruling as broad and potentially far-reaching as Dred Scott, and the result was to mobilize a large segment of the public against the court. Abraham Lincoln spoke for many in his first inaugural address when he took aim at the pretense of the Taney court to decide for the nation: “The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

As much as ours is a dire moment for the future of the American republic, we can at least rest assured that we aren’t living through 1857 or 1860 or 1861. Santayana notwithstanding, history does not actually repeat itself. But this Supreme Court — the Roberts court — is playing its own version of the dangerous game that brought the Taney court to ruin. It is acting as if the public must obey its dictates. It is acting as if its legitimacy is incidental to its power. It is acting as if it cannot be touched or brought to heel.

The Supreme Court is making a bet, in other words, that it is truly unaccountable.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @ jbouie

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• The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. An age gap relationship can help.

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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