Dear Reader:
In this issue of the Yale Review of International Studies, the seventh since our founding, we’re proud to continue and renew our commitment to providing the best possible platform for the outstanding student scholarship produced at this university. Having welcomed work from across the country in our last issue, we return in this installment to our roots: highlighting the diversity and depth of our student body’s body of work.
These pages include, among other essays, a study of the Chinese healthcare system, a reflection on the work of Kazimir Malevich, and a psychoanalytical inquiry into Saddam Hussein. These we bring together under the heading of international studies, not because of disciplinary sympathies among them but because of a conviction that thoughtful critique has little respect for the constraints of the disciplines.
Joining this remarkable crop of essays is a suite of pieces from our editorial staff, a collection that features Nils Metter on the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy; Allison Lazarus on the choice of Janet Yellen to head the Federal Reserve; and Aaron Berman on the forces at work in Shanghai’s marriage market. Grayson Clary contributes a review of Lawrence in Arabia, Scott Anderson’s recent entry in the hagiography of British scholar-soldier T.E. Lawrence.
Alongside these works, we present a pair of interviews with Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame) and James Reston Jr., who has written a new contribution to the field of Kennedy assassination studies. We juxtapose the two on the instinct that the roiling counterpoint of conspiracy and disclosure has enjoyed a peculiar influence in American history. This dynamic is compellingly in force today in a political culture that attends to both the continued disclosures of Edward Snowden and the fiftieth anniversary of the killing of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It’s been our pleasure to bring these pieces together; as always, we hope you’ll enjoy reading them and consider submitting your own work for publication.
Sincerely,
The Editors