The Unspoken !!BETTER!!

These days, we often talk about the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and a struggling global economy. What many are not discussing is the advent of another sinister pandemic: evidence is showing an alarming increase in all forms of gender-based violence during these unprecedented times. For example, as economies shut down and stay-at-home orders become our new normal, an unspoken and damaging effect of the pandemic is a spike in child marriages globally. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to disrupt the efforts made so far to end child marriage, and to result in 13 million more girls forced into early marriages between 2020 and 2030. Evidence of an increase in child marriages is already emerging from places such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Nepal.

The Unspoken

The January 6 committee hearings painted an elaborate and often damning portrait of former President Donald Trump's role in the insurrection. But race is also playing a central, if sometimes unspoken, role. NPR's Sandhya Dirks has more.

The title The Unspoken Alliance brings to mind Sylvia Crosbie's 1974 book, A Tacit Alliance: France and Israel From Suez to the Six-Day War (which treated Israel's collusion with the United Kingdom and France to attack Egypt in 1956), or Trita Parsi's more recent book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States. All states engage in secret diplomacy, but Israel offers some of the most shocking examples. In this book (written by an editor at this magazine), the reader finds the Israel that emerged in the wake of the Holocaust linked decades later in off-the-books diplomacy to an apartheid South Africa led by Nazi sympathizers. That Israel had good relations with and sold weapons to South Africa during the two or so decades before the end of apartheid in the early 1990s was no secret, but the full dimensions of what amounted to an "unspoken" military alliance of nuclear proportions have only now come to light. Polakow-Suransky's dogged research efforts earned him access to South Africa's hitherto secret archives, and his equally dogged seeking out of all who would receive him has produced a compelling history. Although he deplores Israel's ties to the apartheid regime, Polakow-Suransky has treated the handful of officials in the two countries implementing that alliance fairly, even empathetically. He drops his guard only when he refers to "the ever sanctimonious Shimon Peres." How important were these secret ties? By 1979, South Africa had become Israel's largest arms customer, and the total military trade between the two countries reached an estimated $10 billion during the last two decades of the apartheid regime.

You've landed a job. Now what? No one tells you how to navigate your first day in a new role. No one tells you how to take ownership, manage expectations, or handle workplace politics. No one tells you how to get promoted. The answers to these professional unknowns lie in the unspoken rules--the certain ways of doing things that managers expect but don't explain and that top performers do but don't realize. The problem is, these rules aren't taught in school. Instead, they get passed down over dinner or from mentor to mentee, making for an unlevel playing field, with the insiders getting ahead and the outsiders stumbling along through trial and error. Until now. In this practical guide, Gorick Ng, a first-generation college student and Harvard career adviser, demystifies the unspoken rules of work. Ng distills the wisdom he has gathered from over five hundred interviews with professionals across industries and job types about the biggest mistakes people make at work. Loaded with frameworks, checklists, and talking points, the book provides concrete strategies you can apply immediately to your own situation and will help you navigate inevitable questions, such as: How do I manage my time in the face of conflicting priorities?; How do I build relationships when I'm working remotely?; How do I ask for help without looking incompetent or lazy? "The Unspoken Rules" is the only book you need to perform your best, stand out from your peers, and set yourself up for a fulfilling career.

BLHF is addressing mental health risks and their impact on Black students, and all students, by speaking about "The Unspoken Curriculum" out loud. People interested in learning more about the Foundation and its programs, and those who want to make a donation, can text NOSTIGMA to 707070 and visit borislhensonfoundation.org/unspoken. 041b061a72