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Robert de Neufville
Contributor, Big Think
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of Go. You can find me on Twitter at @rdeneufville.
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Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski called this week for the agency to formally adopt a set of rules governing access to the Internet. The proposed rules are meant to […]
As I wrote yesterday, momentum continues to build in Washington for a health-care reform that includes a provision for a government-sponsored program which would compete with private insurance companies. Greg […]
After hearing for months that the so-called “public option” was dead, it looks like it might yet make a miracle recovery. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid finally seem to be […]
Before arriving in New England in 1630, John Winthrop famously told his shipmates that their colony would be like “a city upon hill.” Evoking a passage from the Sermon on […]
As part of its effort to reinvent itself, the Republican National Committee launched a completely redesigned website earlier in the week. The problem is not so much that the website […]
During the presidential campaign last year, a woman told Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting that she couldn’t trust then Sen. Barack Obama because she had read that […]
Amidst the all the discussion of President Obama’s Nobel Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences quietly made another political statement by giving the Nobel Prize in Economics to to […]
Last week I wrote that President Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize more as a show of support for the multilateral policy he advocates than for anything he has […]
President Obama is now the just third sitting president to win the Nobel Peace Prize—the first since Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for his role in setting up the League […]
There have been recent signs that the Republicans could bounce back from their devastating defeat last fall in the upcoming midterm elections. As I wrote a month ago, the early […]
As part of the lead up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, President Obama told the United Nations on Tuesday that the if world does not move […]
For all the overheated talk about how far to the left Barack Obama is—for all that he has been called a socialist and even accused of having sympathies with the […]
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in 2003 that state constitution required that same-sex couples be allowed to marry. State courts in California, Connecticut, […]
“Every joke,” George Orwell wrote, “is a tiny revolution.” That’s because what makes something funny is that it upsets the established order. The more subversive the joke—the more it says […]
Less than a year after their decisive electoral victory, it is starting to look like the Democrats may lose substantial ground in the 2010 midterm elections. According to a Pew […]
Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a review of whether the interrogations of detainees held abroad have violated federal laws. President Obama has repeatedly said he would prefer not […]