Eric Liu
Eric Liu
Eric P. Liuis an American writer and founder of Citizen University. Liu served as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy at the White House between 1999 and 2000. He served as Speechwriter and Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Security Council at the White House from 1993 to 1994. Liu is currently a Senior Law Lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law. In 2014 he was nominated by President Obama to be a member of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
arrogance best cover left people power privilege sound suspicious white
I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America.
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If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.
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Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation.
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The summer of 1991, I took $2,000 of my savings and a desktop program, and I asked my friends to write 800 words about something they cared about. I got eight or nine articles and put them together. It was no frills, black and white, no graphics. I printed them out and just dumped piles around D.C.
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In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite.
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You cannot mistake Bush's clarity of purpose. He believes in a story about freedom and opportunity that makes his followers feel like they aren't just ticking their days down but are part of something larger than themselves.
race weakness shapes
A basic assumption shapes most Americans’ mindset about labor: the belief that the death of unions isn’t my problem because I’m not in a union. That assumption is wrong. Even if you aren’t a member, your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.
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Our commitment should be to leave our environment in better shape than when we found it, our nation's fiscal house in better order, our public infrastructure in better repair, and our people better educated and healthier. To indulge in immediate gratification and exploitation is an insult to previous generations, who sacrificed for us, and thievery from the next generation, who depend on our virtue.
white liberty pressure
Today's multiracial Americans are at greater liberty to choose how they'd like to be seen, and under less pressure to pass for white.
age citizens tests
Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test.
our-generation people generations
I had heard so much negative talk about our generation, that we're slackers and young fogies, that I knew wasn't true of the people I know.
zero loss games
Much of our national debate proceeds as if China and America were locked in a zero-sum game in which one's loss is precisely the other's gain.
games lessons election
Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.
gestures habit unwind
The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits.