Recent Posts

Germany’s Failed Hezbollah Ban

In retrospect, Germany’s much-vaunted Hezbollah ban appears to have been little more than a publicity stunt aimed at silencing critics of the German government’s pro-Iran foreign policy. Hezbollah has effectively evaded the ban by transferring many of its activities to charities and cultural centers controlled by Iran. Iran’s main base …

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France’s Incomplete Reckoning With Its Colonial Past

I first met Salim, a 35-year-old French citizen of Algerian origin, about 10 years ago at a cafe near Levallois, the Parisian banlieue—or peri-urban ghetto—where he lived at the time. In the course of our wide-ranging discussion about French history and identity, part of the fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation, …

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