Stephen Schwartz, the composer and lyricist for Wicked, Pippin, Godspell and more, has pulled his works from North Carolina because of its new discrimination law. He says, “In the 1970’s, I, along with many other writers and artists, participated in a similar action against apartheid in South Africa, and as you know, this eventually proved to be very effective.”

“The country which has the highest per capita income in the world is treating its migrant labourers in conditions described by the Guardian newspaper as “modern-day slavery”. It is persecuting political dissenters and it put its greatest poet in prison and then only released him to avoid embarrassment when the attention of the international art world was briefly focused on the country. Qatar is importing so much from the West: architects, artists, scientists, universities, and much more besides. Why then, as some in the Gulf are brave enough to point out, does it not import freedom and the rule of law?”

“Ah, April. A month of cherry blossoms and light cardigans, birds twittering and taxes being filed. And, of course, peak harvest season for Switzerland’s world-famous spaghetti crop, which, thanks to an exceptionally mild winter, was experiencing a bumper year in 1957.”

“Few would argue that the rankings have helped shape a world in which students are seen as consumers, and colleges and universities as commodities. The rankings are a key reason the higher-education landscape today operates like a marketplace in which institutions compete to convince the best students to buy their product.”