In 2003, while I was teaching at Davidson College in North Carolina, I saw an ad in the local newspaper announcing a “Going Out of Business” sale of Utica Linen products. The mill that had been making these linens was closing and relocating to Asia where they would be able to pay lower wages. When I saw that ad, I thought back 50 years ago to when that same company’s mills had first moved to North Carolina after shutting down operations in Utica, my hometown. They did so to take advantage of North Carolina’s cheaper non-union labor. What I remember...

In the arid hills of south-eastern Turkey, an increasingly bloody war is destabilising one of the region’s most pivotal countries. For three decades, Turkey and its Kurdish minority population have fought over demands for sovereignty and national aspirations. A shaky ceasefire signed in 2013 prevented outright bloodletting and offered a period of relative calm; however, that sense of peace disappeared last summer. In a rapid succession of events, Turkey’s leadership diverted attention away from domestic and regional challenges to one issue: suppression of the Kurds.On the surface, the renewed fighting might seem like just another flare-up in the course of...