Fantasy expands in modern works


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Few genres owe a greater debt to one person than fantasy does to J.R.R. Tolkien. With The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he created an entire tradition of sword and sorcery, setting the standard for the sorts of characters, storylines and settings that would appear in works of fantasy for more than 50 […]

What should the media’s role be in the Petraeus scandal?


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This week, China elected new members of their Communist leadership. More than 1 million Israelis had to sleep in bomb shelters because of the Gaza conflict. President Barack Obama began the first week of his second term. But the news that received the most extensive media coverage this week? Former CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital […]

Has UCLA emerged as USC’s top Pac-12 South competition?


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Point: UCLA’s high-powered recruiting and budding star quarterback Brett Hundley make the Bruins USC’s stiffest challenge going forward.  The week leading up to the annual USC-UCLA football game is always chock-full of (mostly) friendly banter between the two schools. In recent seasons, the pregame narrative has involved the Trojans’ win streak against the Bruins and […]

New measures demand attention


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Last week voters across the country approved measures that will change the face of American education. In California, Proposition 30 passed, allowing for a tax increase on the wealthiest Californians to fund K-12 schools as well as state colleges and universities. In Washington and Georgia, voters passed a law to allow charter schools to operate, […]

USC must respect students’ free speech


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There was an embarassing incident last Thursday when an administration employee instructed Dept. of Public Safety officers to throw three doctorate students out of an event celebrating the groundbreaking of Wallis Annenberg Hall on suspicion of being protestors. The three second-year Ph.D. communication students — Alex Leavitt, Emma Bloomfield and Marcus Shepard — were falsely […]