Jason Willick

Junior studying World History and Global Affairs at Stanford University in California. Interested in politics, law and culture. Formerly a columnist and editor for The Daily Californian.

The Other Generation Gap

. A U.S. Navy Destroyer fires a Tomahawk Cruise Missile. Image Source: Flickr The much-publicized “generation gap” in U.S. politics is generally thought to apply primarily to domestic

By Jason Willick

/ September 4, 2013

The Most Pro-Censorship Politician in America?

Christine Quinn in 2012 // Credit: David Shankbone It’s not hard to find politicians with bad records on First Amendment issues. But I’m not aware of any prominent American

By Jason Willick

/ August 15, 2013

Speech, Terror, and Gay Rights: The First Amendment in 2013

Image source: The First Amendment Center. Since 1997, the First Amendment Center, a research and education foundation, has sponsored an annual survey of American public opinion on First Amendment issues.

By Jason Willick

/ July 19, 2013

The Fall of the Humanities and Political Paralysis

A few weeks ago, after a wave of reports documenting the sharp decline of humanities majors at U.S. colleges and universities shook the academic community, I made my own

By Jason Willick

/ July 17, 2013

Immigration and the Idea of Equality

In different ways, liberals and conservatives both pine for the 1950s. Liberals mourn the loss of the egalitarian economic arrangements that characterized the postwar decade — the strong unions, the growing

By Jason Willick

/ July 12, 2013

Math and Morality

Harvard economist Greg Mankiw’s provocative recent paper, “Defending the One Percent,” has reinvigorated the debate about taxing the rich across the economics blogosphere, with Paul Krugman, The Economist and

By Jason Willick

/ June 24, 2013

The NRA, the NSA and the Politics of Individualism

Much of the right-wing resistance to the post-Newtown gun control push was animated, not by gun owners’ commitment to hunting or personal defense, but by the idea that

By Jason Willick

/ June 8, 2013

The Mystery of Silicon Valley Politics

President Barack Obama holds a town hall with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Silicon Valley is an invaluable Democratic asset. In 2012, Barack Obama crushed Mitt Romney by 42 percentage points

By Jason Willick

/ May 28, 2013

Has the Right Rediscovered the First Amendment?

The GOP has not historically been the party of the First Amendment. In the most explosive political debates since the Second World War — from the McCarthyite purges of the 1950s

By Jason Willick

/ May 22, 2013