menu_open Columnists
Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby

Townhall

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Life is for the living. The names on public buildings shouldn’t be.

Why no government-owned or operated facility should be named after someone who is alive.

previous day 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The very worst thing about Auschwitz

Even after 80 years, Auschwitz, the largest mass-murder site on earth, still stupefies.

previous day 10

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Back, at last, to the color-blind principle

Trump's executive order on racial preferences restores the ideal MLK dreamed of.

26.01.2025 20

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

America’s most enduring bipartisan tradition: political hypocrisy

Each party has a lenient standard for itself and a much more stringent one for its opponents.

22.01.2025 8

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Trump, Greenland, and the power of the bully pulpit

Even outlandish notions become plausible when a president promotes them.

19.01.2025 10

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The terrible déjà vu of an Israel-Hamas hostage deal

The Jewish state is poised to repeat a blunder that may pave the way to another Oct. 7.

15.01.2025 10

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Black patriotism and Martin Luther King Jr.

He was proudly American to his core, not only staking a claim to the American dream, but enriching it for all.

14.01.2025 4

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Abolish the presidential pardon power

Trump and Biden have shown that the benefits of unfettered clemency no longer outweigh its drawbacks.

12.01.2025 9

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The growing appeal of the ‘Live Free or Die’ state

People move for all kinds of reasons, of course, but it would be hard to deny that what prompts so many to abandon Massachusetts and make a new start...

09.01.2025 7

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

When truths collide

Can something and its opposite both be accurate?

08.01.2025 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

A woman died in agony as onlookers pressed ‘Record’

No one tried to help Debrina Kawam as she went up in flames.

05.01.2025 10

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! (Both are fine.)

The reason for the season isn’t to score political points.

24.12.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

‘Raise the Age’ measures draw more teens into crime

If 18-year-olds are adults when they engage in good activities, they should be treated as adults when they engage in bad ones.

22.12.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

A commutation for federal death row inmates would be a travesty of justice

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has done nothing to merit clemency.

18.12.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Minimum wage goes up. Employment goes down. Rinse and repeat.

Mandatory minimum wage increases hurt many of the people they are supposedly meant to help.

17.12.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Go home, Massachusetts lawmakers

Nothing good comes from having a Legislature that stays in session year-round.

15.12.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

‘First, set fire to their synagogues’

The burning of synagogues is one of the oldest evils perpetrated against Jews.

12.12.2024 5

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right that Trump can’t revoke

If you’re born in America, you’re an American, whether the president likes it or not.

11.12.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Argentina’s capitalist counterrevolution is off to a good start

The country’s ‘anarcho-libertarian’ president has balanced the budget, slashed spending, shrunk inflation — and remained popular.

08.12.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

A student’s T-shirt says: ‘There are only two genders.’ What does the Constitution say?

A Middleborough seventh-grader is asking the Supreme Court to take up his case.

04.12.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Thank God for the ‘invisible hand’

Consider the extraordinary chain of events that gets the turkey to your Thanksgiving table.

27.11.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The myths that hide why Social Security is unsustainable

Beginning with FDR, politicians have promoted fables and fibs about the nation’s largest spending program.

24.11.2024 20

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

No, Trump didn’t earn an ‘unprecedented and powerful’ mandate

The president-elect’s winning margin — just 1.6 percentage points — is one of the tiniest in history.

20.11.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The missionary in the parking lot

I understand why Christians invite me to "come to Jesus." They should understand why I say "No, thank you."

17.11.2024 5

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The ‘Jew hunt’ in Amsterdam was no anomaly

Antisemitism, the great evil that Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned of, has spread across the globe.

13.11.2024 5

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Apologize to Georgia, Mr. President

Biden ought to apologize for his role in promoting such an ugly libel about Georgia's election law.

12.11.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

For many leading conservatives, ‘Never Trump’ didn’t mean never

Giving in to Trump was good for business.

10.11.2024 5

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Argentina against the world

The country’s new president announces a new foreign policy: ‘Long live freedom, damn it!’

06.11.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

What makes vote-buying wrong?

Politicians can promise lots of things in exchange for votes, but it’s a crime to offer cash. Exactly why is a puzzle.

03.11.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Why I won’t vote for president

To my mind, a Trump presidency would be unthinkable. A Harris presidency would be too.

30.10.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

When Obama was the divider-in-chief

Well before there was Trump, there was Obama. And Obama’s presidency was the most polarizing in modern history up to that time.

30.10.2024 20

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Hispanic voters flock to the GOP, exploding the ‘great replacement’ theory

As immigration from Latin America has surged, so have Republican fortunes.

23.10.2024 4

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Our poor neighbor to the north

On a per-capita basis America remains vastly more economically productive than Canada.

22.10.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Oklahoma urges private groups to launch charter schools — as long as they’re not religious

Does the First Amendment allow states to discriminate against schools run by a church?

16.10.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby’s ballot guide: Yes on 1. No on 2, 3, 4, and 5.

How one Globe columnist us voting on the Massachusetts ballot issues.

13.10.2024 8

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

For US Jews, the postwar years were a golden age. It ended on Oct. 7.

Even in America, the old patterns of Jewish history cannot be escaped.

09.10.2024 3

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Antisemitism and the power of the big lie

The most audacious falsehoods about Jews have the most power.

29.09.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Why don’t unions have to stand for reelection?

A one-time vote is no way to uphold workplace democracy.

15.09.2024 10

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The specious argument that Harris’s nomination was ‘undemocratic’

There is no shortage of serious reasons to oppose Harris’s campaign for the White House. But those who deride her candidacy as anti-democratic...

10.09.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Religion is America’s mighty engine of charitable goodness

The federal government rightly characterizes faith-based organizations as ‘the bedrock of our society.’

28.08.2024 10

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The day Phil Donahue and I kept our clothes on

Donahue struck me as a genuine and appealing personality. My single encounter with him was admittedly inane, but I’m glad I had the experience.

27.08.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

An Israeli hostage deal with Hamas only guarantees future atrocities

The horrors of Oct. 7 were planned by Palestinian terrorists Jerusalem freed in exchange for a captive

20.08.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, H.W. Bush . . . and Harris?

It has been much more common for vice presidents to accede to the presidency upon the death or resignation of their predecessor.

20.08.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

America tortured the 9/11 mastermind. That’s why he will never pay for his crimes.

There will be no death penalty for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

13.08.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

No longer on defense, Ukraine invades Russia

For the first time in this war, Ukraine has invaded Russia.

13.08.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

The case for colorblindness is as compelling — and vital — as ever

Coleman Hughes, a young Black author, argues that the way to achieve justice is to refuse to focus on race.

11.08.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Nike celebrates athletics at its worst

In a toxic new ad, the footwear and apparel company preaches that athletes achieve glory by embracing their darkest and most selfish impulses.

07.08.2024 20

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Two arch-terrorists are dead. Rejoice.

Should good people celebrate when evil people are killed?

06.08.2024 1

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Will making community college free make it better?

If Mass. makes these schools free for everyone, enrollment is likely to rise, but graduation rates may not budge.

28.07.2024 2

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby

Alas, Trump has already won on the issue of immigration

A majority of Americans now want immigration to be curtailed and all undocumented migrants expelled.

21.07.2024 7

Boston Globe

Jeff Jacoby