The Columbia Political Review has joined with other college political publications to form the Alliance of Collegiate Editors (ACE), hoping to generate cross-campus dialogue on political issues. Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent Uighur rights activist currently living in exile in the U.S., has agreed to answer some of our questions. You can read Ms. Kadeer's biography, including information on her involvement in the July 2009 unrest in Urumchi, in the New York Times here. For background information on Xinjiang/East Turkmenistan, and the Uighurs, click here.

As the final issue of CPR was going to press, volcanic ash was still spewing out of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland and bringing much of our globalized world to a relative standstill. When I first heard the news, I couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of ash covering huge swathes of land was simply ludicrous to me.

During the winter break between my two semesters abroad at Tsinghua University in Beijing, I made the trek to Xiaoshan, an administrative district of Hangzhou, one of southern China’s biggest cities. The occasion for this visit to Xiaoshan was a family member’s wedding. My grandmother’s cousin’s daughter, Chen Xingmei, was getting married to a young man, Chen Xingjiang, whom she met through work and with whom, by chance, she shares two of three characters in her name.

In a recent episode of ABC’s new primetime hit comedy Modern Family, audiences were treated to a familiar scenario. Three of the show’s characters—Jay Pritchett, his thirty-something son, Mitchell Pritchett, and the former’s preteen stepson, Manny—go on a trip to the great outdoors for some stargazing and male bonding, but unexpected events soon lead the evening hilariously awry.

“The system must be completely overhauled,” said Nicolas Sarkozy in October 2008, as the world economy was in the midst of a startling decline. A few months later the cover of Newsweek announced “We Are Socialists Now.” These were just two signs of the surprisingly mainstream consensus that the global financial crisis had marked a significant rupture with traditional economics and politics.

Historically, international legislation on the topic of gender equality has often sparked controversy and critical dismissal. The latest version of the debate on women’s rights has focused on the increasing prevalence of quotas for women leaders in both politics and business. Despite the obvious irony, it comes as no surprise that seven Indian MPs harassed Vice President Hamid Ansari on March 8, International Women’s Day, tearing up and throwing copies of the Women’s Reservation Bill at him while shouting anti-bill slogans.

On May 6, the U.K. will hold what David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, described on April 6 as “the most important election in a generation.”

Picture a world where the whistle of bullets drowns out the chirping of birds. Where army units patrol violent, poverty-stricken streets. Where farmers walk among fields of poppy, hoping a successful harvest will provide for their families. Where mothers of lost sons gather and pray that each new day may bring a resurrection of peace. This is not a distant snapshot, but a reality close to home. Welcome to the world of narcocultura. Welcome to Mexico.

Whenever Americans recall Somalia, whether considering lofty foreign policy aims or simply reflecting upon the chance encounter with the name, our minds inevitably snap back to October 3, 1993 and the tragedy that was the Battle of Mogadishu. This is a memory of eighteen U.S. soldiers lying senselessly dead and desecrated, one even decapitated, in the streets of a hostile city. Given the striking clarity with which Black Hawk Down has memorialized the chaos and the horror of this battle, it is no surprise that the trauma remains fresh in our collective consciousness. At the time, the shock of this loss and the seemingly intractable and inhuman belligerence and disorder of the nation compelled the U.S. and all other foreign forces to withdraw. Somalia did not fit with the spirit of the times, the notions of how intervention and aid was to be conducted. After 1993, Somalia dropped off the map of U.S. foreign policy, relegated to a distasteful and repressed memory, and no one has been able to make a great case for a return.

“Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry,” spat Karl. He’d be damned if he let some senile old waiter bring out a tray of canapes without doilies. Without doilies! Might as well ration the butter and sleep with Stalin’s corpse.

Hillary Clinton is a brilliant, paranoid bitch. Barack Obama is clever but arrogant. The less said about John Edwards, the better—ditto for his wife, Elizabeth. Okay, fine: she’s an “abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazywoman.”

With the help of the French, the veil—also known more accurately in various forms as the burqa, hijab or niqab—has conquered both the bra and the bikini as the world’s most contentious piece of women’s apparel.

The headlines make it obvious: banks are now earning record profits while the national unemployment rate hovers near ten percent. The clichéd “Wall Street vs. Main Street” dichotomy has become embedded in our political vernacular.

For those who campaign for stricter limits on how and where guns may be acquired and used, the new legal challenges will create troublesome delays, if not outright roadblocks.

When I moved to New York City last year to attend Columbia University, I knew that finding housing would be a challenge; after three weeks of frustration, I finally managed to find an acceptable studio apartment one mile north of campus. What I didn’t know was that the apartment was available because the previous tenant had recently leapt to his death out of the 15th-story window. That element of surrealism would foreshadow some of my sociological experiences in the new building.

On Jan. 28, in the aftermath of the unprecedented mass demonstrations of late December in which millions of protesters challenged riot police in running street battles, the Iranian government publicly hanged Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour.

It’s on roughly a third of all laptops in any given lecture hall, and one of your suitemates is, I guarantee, playing it right now. A Columbia student recently featured on the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire website revealed to the Spec his study habits: “I just did a lot of Sporcle and hoped for the best.” Welcome to the world that Sporcle has created.

It was morning in America—and Harry Reid was already having a bad day. Below is a day in the mind of the Senate Majority Leader.