Guest Columns

Guest Column by Frank Broomell | Don't idolize Chelsea Manning. Others deserve a voice.

When Chelsea Manning speaks at the Annenberg Center on November 29, the Penn campus will be missing out on an opportunity.

Guest Column by Miru Osuga | A call for more equitable classrooms

Academia does not exist in a vacuum of the University; it is full of real people bringing their own real biases into this space. 

Guest Column by Edward Jing | We need to address club recruitment processes

The club recruitment process is one of the first stressors that new students encounter when they arrive at Penn, and it has wide-ranging effects on both student life and mental health.

Guest Column by Celeste Marcus | Communities of certainty

College students, whether they are secular or religious, are religious. That is, they have dogmas, cults, temples, scriptures, prooftexts, prophets, methods of absolution, and methods of excommunication.

Guest Column by Blaze Bernstein | A task force on alienation and incompetence

To error is to be human; but to be a Penn administrator is to never learn from those mistakes.

Guest Column by Jay Shah | Reminder to upperclassmen: we were all freshmen once

Freshmen are often shocked to learn that there lies a multi-step process for them to find their home.

Guest Column by Amy Wax | In response to "Open letter to the University of Pennsylvania community"

The Daily Pennsylvanian letter on my recent op-ed, signed by some of my colleagues, puts forth no substantive argument and so requires no response on that score

Guest Column by Jack Hostager & Sharon Christner | Philadelphia, heroin and you

Between August 22 and 28, while Penn freshmen enjoyed a gala at the art museum and Penn-themed ice sculptures, an estimated 23 people died from a drug overdose in the city of Philadelphia. 

Guest Column by 33 Penn Law faculty members | Open letter to the University of Pennsylvania community

We write to condemn recent statements our colleague, Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at Penn Law, has made in popular media pieces.

Guest Column by Amy Gutmann | Our community is our strength

At the beginning of this new academic year, I hope we all take a few moments to celebrate our campus community as the best and, ultimately, the only way forward to a better world.

Guest Column by Olivia Harding | One year on: We're still workers and we will win

Exactly one year ago, in its Columbia University decision, the National Labor Relations Board reconciled a decades-long inconsistency in employment law.

Guest Column by 54 Penn students & alumni | Statement on Amy Wax and Charlottesville

We, a group of Penn alumnae and current students, wish to address white supremacist violence and discourse in America.

Penn Dems | Five Action Plans Biden Should Take

As President Biden takes office, he arrives with a full plate of national crises and a unified government. Here are five things Penn Dem's thinks he should focus on.

Isabella Glassman | Penn’s Year of Civic Disengagement

Penn's Year of Civic Engagement has largely failed to make a major impact in encouraging civic engagement across the University, even as the community demands activism.

Guest Column by William Snow | Penn students must rethink the college-to-consulting pipeline

Why are juniors and seniors spending 90 percent of their free time casing and networking and attending info sessions? Why aren’t we contemplating what we really want out of life, and how we can achieve it?

Guest Column by Abhi Hendi | Friends, Quakers, Countrymen, lend me your ears

My parents took a risk. Two freshly minted Ph.D.'s, raised in poverty, leaving their home country, coming to America.

Guest Column by five Penn Law professors | Notions of 'bourgeois' cultural superiority are based on bad history

In the recent opinion article “Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture,” published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander lament the loss of the “bourgeois cultural hegemony” of the 1950s.

Guest Column by Dean of Penn Law School Ted Ruger | On Charlottesville, free speech and diversity

As a community and as individuals we are shocked and saddened by the deadly, violent events in Charlottesville yesterday, and we grieve for the victims and their families.

Guest Column | Why doctors need to look past the stats

“You have two months left to live.” The doctor delivered the words with a steel, monotone voice without looking up from his computer.

Guest Column | Confronting Radical Islam

After the recent atrocities in Westminster, Manchester, and London, the politically correct in the United Kingdom and the world are yet again fully engaged in assiduously ignoring the threat we all face. The facts are as plain as they are uncomfortable — the world is currently living through an unprecedented threat, a modern enemy fighting for an archaic, theocratic vision that president George W.