Random violence is incredibly infectious

Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female

We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we've treated the Arab world as just an oil field.

Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health

Solar power is one of the most hopeful technologies but still produces about 0.01 percent of U.S. electricity. The U.S. allocates just $159 million for solar research per year - about what we spend in Iraq every nine hours.

China was probably the worst place in the world to grow up female 100 years ago. There was foot binding, female infanticide, concubinage, and child marriage, and now it's one of the better places. So I really do feel that we're on the right side of history here.

There are ten times as many sex slaves transported around the globe today as agrarian slaves were transported in the 1790s.