Tomas Ayuso’s images are jarring distillations of humanity. His pictures are reflections of intense violence, depicting machine guns, police, and bullet wound scars. Yet his photos also contain something unexpected: joy.
“It’s time for people to grow a spine,” says Ayaan Moledina, a junior in high school from Austin, Texas. “I think America has the potential to be the best country to live in, in the world. We’re not there yet. And I don’t think there are people working hard enough to get there.”
erial shots capture more than the sheer scale of the No Kings protests—they capture their pulse. Children, perched on their parents’ shoulders, wave American flags as drums rattle the streets and hearts alike. The turnout is staggering.
“I met so many mums who just feel like they are watching their children starve and die. There’s nothing that they can do to help, and they feel forgotten,” said Meghan Greenhalgh, Director of International Programs at the International Medical Corps, who recently visited Sudan to report on the war.
It was 1:15 p.m. when Professor Sisay Ade, identified by a pseudonym, received a call from Mbale Regional Hospital that his sister, Kofi, also a pseudonym, 58, had gone into cardiac arrest. With a history of end-stage renal failure and diabetes, Kofi had checked into the Msaba Wing that morning to undergo routine dialysis treatment. Thirty minutes later, her heart abruptly ceased to function.
On August 15, 2025, hundreds filled the broad walkways of Yasukuni Shrine for the annual commemoration of the official end of World War II. The line moved slowly—but the conversations did not.
Visiting the site for academic research, Ryne Hisada ’27, a Japanese-American student at Yale University, expected a quiet, somber atmosphere in respect for the deceased.
Instead, he found himself surrounded by raised voices. Visitors weren’t whispering about politics, but arguing about it in full volume.
In 424 colleges across 47 states—including over half of the Ivy Leagues—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have been revised, reduced, and called into question over the past two years. From the renaming of affinity spaces to the removal of resources and faculty entirely, these changes largely result from the anti-DEI pressure of the Trump administration, not official legislation. Although Yale continues to evade Trump’s crosshairs, especially compared to peer institutions like Columbia or Harvard, the deteriorating national landscape leaves student leaders concerned for the futures of the affinity spaces and cultural centers that they hold dear.
What should have been a two-hour drive stretched into twenty. Families pressed their heads against their car windows, watching their homeland slip further away as they fled Artsakh for Armenia.
