Noam Chomsky is one of the most cited living intellectuals, described by The New York Times as “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” and widely regarded as the father of modern linguistics. Author of numerous influential works, including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, and Who Rules the World?, Chomsky has shaped both linguistic theory and [...]

Cyclone Ditwah exposed Sri Lanka’s catastrophic lack of preparedness. After the first red alerts predicting very heavy rainfall were issued on the night of November 25, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s public Facebook posts the following day focused on meetings with film producers and Road Development Authority engineers. It was only on the morning [...]

A year after the leftist National People’s Power (NPP) coalition won an unprecedented supermajority in Sri Lanka’s November 2024 parliamentary elections—with support from both the majority Sinhala and minority Tamil communities—it has fallen short in terms of delivering on its sweeping promises. As the first party to govern Sri Lanka outside the two-party system, the [...]

In courtrooms from Birmingham, Alabama, to Santa Maria, California, Thomas Mesereau has faced some of the highest stakes in American criminal law. Renowned for his landmark criminal defense of pop icon Michael Jackson and over two decades representing clients on death row in the Deep South, Mesereau speaks with JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, [...]

In a shocking discovery that has sent ripples across the international community, ongoing excavations at a mass grave site in Chemmani, in northern Sri Lanka, have uncovered more than 100 skeletal remains, including those of children and infants. The grim findings at Chemmani have reignited global attention on one of the world’s most severe cases [...]

Gaza is suffering “man-made mass starvation” caused by the blockade of aid into the territory, the head of the World-Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said, as more than 100 humanitarian agencies urged Israel to allow supplies in to alleviate the crisis. In the face of this catastrophe, Canada must urgently deploy peacekeeping forces to [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Earlier this month, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz proposed relocating Gaza’s population to designated camps in the southern part of the Strip—an initiative that has drawn international criticism and raised legal concerns over potential violations of international law. Leaked documents and government briefings appear to outline a [...]

Sri Lanka’s recently elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s political coalition, the National People’s Power (NPP), won an overwhelming amount of support from the majority Sinhalese community as well as the minority Tamil community, receiving a historic supermajority in the November 2024 Parliamentary elections. This broad mandate across ethnic lines presents a historic opportunity to address [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Mark Salter, a journalist, analyst, and writer with over 25 years of professional experience in democratization, governance, and post-conflict peacebuilding, speaks to JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, Pitasanna Shanmugathas, about his upcoming book From Independence to Aragalaya: A Modern History of Sri Lanka. In this interview, Salter [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983-2009) between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil militant and political organization fighting for an independent Tamil state, claimed 80,000-100,000 lives by UN estimates, with its legacy of displacement and land dispossession still affecting various minority [...]