Author Archives: ErikaChristakis

About ErikaChristakis

Early childhood educator/public health advocate/Harvard College administrator/ journalist. Uncommon sense for the common good. Unmarketable bachelor’s degree (Harvard, anthropology) Semi-marketable graduate degrees (Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania…). Career at the intersection of family, society, and schools. (Including pop-culture diversions and long stint in parenting vortex.) Forging a new path to connect all of the above.

Angelina and Our Altered States

Posted on 05/16/2013

My TIME.com post today on… what else? Angelina Jolie’s disclosure of her recent preventive double mastectomy and breast reconstruction was rightly hailed as a sensible public health message to women “living under the shadow of cancer.” But the gesture may … Continue reading →

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How To Reduce Sports-Related Violence: Make Teens the Referees

Posted on 05/08/2013

My TIME.com post today on how we can better foster responsibility in teens (and reduce violence at high school sports events): put the kids in charge. Here’s my case: It’s often said that team sports serve as a proxy for actual violence. … Continue reading →

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Race to Somewhere

Posted on 04/28/2013

An open letter to my students at Harvard: Some of you are upset with me for writing a piece at Cognoscenti in which I questioned the value of our punishing, sometimes brutalizing “race to the top” admissions process to elite … Continue reading →

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Empathy Gap

Posted on 04/26/2013

My family and Bangladesh go way back: I lived in Bangladesh for a year when I was in my early twenties. A decade later, in an odd twist of fate, my sister moved to Bangladesh, too, and stayed there with … Continue reading →

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Two Degrees of Separation From a Bomber

Posted on 04/23/2013

A TIME.com column I wrote today with my husband, Nicholas Christakis: We spent a tense hour last Monday checking Facebook and Twitter to account for all 400 of our students at Harvard College, several of whom had been running in the marathon … Continue reading →

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Painful Questions

Posted on 04/21/2013

How do we talk about the Boston marathon murders in a way that acknowledges the suffering and the evil, yet also places them within the broader perspective of suffering and evil that the human race has experienced, and is currently … Continue reading →

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Who You Gonna Call In A Crisis?

Posted on 04/20/2013

I want to return to my “Big Fat American Government” piece I posted a couple days ago. I think the horrific explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas is a chilling counterpoint to the kind of government response … Continue reading →

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My Big Fat American Government

Posted on 04/19/2013

Hey, props to Boston! Taxachusetts, I heart you. Gimme some B-I-G government! O big/bloated/corrupt government-shunners, O bombastic, ignorant Tea partiers, O federal trough-slopping hypocrites… come on, just admit it. Didn’t we all see this week what robust public investments in health, … Continue reading →

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The Little State That Could (or: More Warm Fuzzies for Mass-holes)

Posted on 04/17/2013

I’m re-posting something I wrote last year, about my home state, that seems especially appropriate today. Enjoy. (I hope it goes without saying that I’m not trying to make light of recent events, but I am thinking rather fondly about … Continue reading →

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A Boston Patriot

Posted on 04/16/2013

(Update: I just learned that the sister of one of our dining hall workers here at Harvard College was among the victims. My heart goes out to her devastated family.) The Shot heard ’round the world. The cry, too. My … Continue reading →

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