Michael Dukakis is hunched over in his office in the Renaissance Park Building in Boston, rummaging through cardboard boxes on the floor. The political-science department at Northeastern University has just moved in, and Dukakis is still dealing with the upheaval. “For God’s sake, it’s sitting here!” he says, suddenly straightening up. Next to the window […]

While Europe agonizes over the Greek debt crisis, the United States is saddled with one of its own. Individual investment portfolios are replete with $72 billion in bonds issued by Puerto Rico’s government and its agencies, and since August this US Commonwealth has been in default. While federal law allows municipalities to restructure their debts […]

Come to campus for the family weekend festivities, stay for a graduate degree. That’s the idea behind Northeastern University’s newest tuition discount, which will give a 25 percent break to the parents and siblings of undergraduate students if they pursue a degree in almost any of the school’s graduate programs. Northeastern said it will unroll […]

“We knew that we shouldn’t presume to substitute government for the private sector,” says Deval Patrick, who as governor of Massachusetts signed the subsidies into law. (He’s now a managing director at Bain Capital.) “If you can attract enough of the small companies that are on the cutting edge of research, the big companies will […]

The Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary is holding a hearing about an omnibus criminal justice bill that, among other things, would vastly restrict the ability of corrections officials to put prisoners in solitary confinement or its functional equivalent. Scholars have studied the lingering reliance on solitary confinement in our nation’s prisons, despite the […]

My view of the winners and losers in Tuesday night’s Democratic debate is pretty much the same as what I’ve seen from other observers. Hillary Clinton won with a strong, polished performance (and was likable enough). Bernie Sanders was uneven but had his moments. And Martin O’Malley emerged as the only real alternative to the […]