“You can sleep after election day,” I heard one volunteer say, and this battle cry seemed to capture a truth of the 2008 presidential campaign — that the election mattered, not only because of the president it would elect, but because of the sense of belonging and meaning citizens gained from their participation in it. But it also hinted at another truth: that come November 4th, for most people, the work would be over. Even though this year’s presidential primaries marked the highest voter turnout in over three decades, less than one-fifth of Americans expect to be involved in political issues after the election. It would be Obama’s job from there on out.

We seem to love to consume the myth that some man will lead us to the promised land absent any real struggle or sacrifice on our part. In this, as in other aspects, Barack Obama is a product of the politics of our day. We not only adore the myth that a man will give us a good speech and lead us to progress, we adore the idea that we won’t be required to do any real work or make any real sacrifice ourselves.

“I’ve had a little problem with the language in the past,” he joked, “so—if you’ve got room in the initiative for me, let me know.” Had President Bush changed that first “I” to “we,” he would have made an equally true but infinitely more powerful statement.

On May 6, 2002, the Bush Administration took the unusual action of ‘unsigning’ an international treaty. Equally unusually, Bill Clinton had signed this treaty on his last day in office more than two years earlier. The treaty in question was the Rome Statute, the founding document of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

When I broke the news to my parents this past Thanksgiving that I would not be seeking conventional employment after graduating this May, I was met with a surprising reaction: “You realize that you’re not going to be covered under our health insurance policy.”

Few issues bring forth such bilious bombast as the firefight between gun advocates and anti-gun activists. Shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech recently brought questions of gun control back into the public consciousness. Now, as the Supreme Court prepares in this summer’s District of Columbia v. Heller to address the 2nd Amendment for the first time since 1939’s U.S. v. Miller, the bile is rising once more.

“Indian peasants live in such a primitive way that communication is practically impossible… The price they must pay for integration is high-renunciation of their culture, their language; their beliefs, their traditions and customs, and the adoption of the culture of their ancient masters… Perhaps there is no realistic way to integrate our societies other than asking the Indians to pay that price…”

Bruce Robbins is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. His most recent book is Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State.

How free is democracy? How do raids perpetuate apartheid? Is economic competition the result of an innate human viciousness? The answers to these and other political questions, framed as a series of short essays, allow J.M. Coetzee to expose the fragility and incoherence of strong political opinions in his latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year.

It has become a liberal truism that Muslim Americans would not want to vote for the party of the administration responsible for the violation of their civil liberties, but—surprise —Muslim Republicans exist. Columbia Political Science Professor Robert Shapiro notes that these assumptions are rooted in liberal attitudes, rather than an analysis of voting trends and the motives behind them.

Western media coverage of the conflict in Kenya has been enormous, especially for a story coming out of Africa. The reportage has been a staple of the Economist and the New York Times since the beginning of the year, and even the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has run the AP’s dispatches from Nairobi.

The pose is almost menacing. Two penetrating, steel-blue eyes gaze downward at the viewer, the mouth calm but clenched. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Time’s 2007 Person of the Year, projects a threatening image in the magazine’s cover shot. The same could be said about Russia’s current image in the West.

Rampant apathy and cynicism. Growing civic disengagement. Hedonistic individualism. These accusations have often been leveled at our generation of students. The lack of traditional engagement by the 18-24-year-old cohort has been seen as the end of student activism. But these criticisms are blind to the diversity and subtle power of the student action happening today.

I didn’t get into college on my first try. I came from a good high school, made National Honor Society, and was class president. I also had pretty unimpressive grades, and got suspended from school my senior year. I was a mixed candidate, to be sure. Too self-assured to listen to anyone, bored senseless by class, and more than a little lazy, it’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t cool enough to drink or do drugs. But I was certainly cocky; I applied early to MIT and assumed that I’d get in. More accurately, it didn’t even occur to me that I wouldn’t get in.

Having directed Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and having served as the Consulting Producer for Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006) and Executive Producer for No End in Sight (2007), Alex Gibney has found a formula to refresh the politico-documentary genre and penetrate Hollywood’s mainstream distribution.