Vox Sentences: The Missouri football team forces a pair of turnovers

Missouri's football team forces the school's president and chancellor to resign; Aung San Suu Kyi's party triumphs in Burma; Netanyahu's awkward US visit.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Two sacks for Mizzou

(Brian Davidson/Getty Images)

• The president and chancellor of the University of Missouri have stepped down in the wake of student protests over race relations on campus.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Protests ostensibly started after a pair of incidents this fall: A group of students shouted racial slurs at the head of the Missouri Students Association, and someone drew a swastika out of human feces on a dorm-room wall.

  [Missourian / Emma Vandelinder]

• Most student protesters, however, date the unrest back to last year, when the campus didn't do much to address the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri — less than two hours from campus — and black students attempting to raise awareness got harassed instead.

• Students have been demanding the resignation of university president Tim Wolfe. One big reason: During Missouri's homecoming parade last month, a group of protesters linked arms in front of Wolfe's convertible; Wolfe bumped one of the students.

  [Missourian / Ruth Serven and Ashley Reese]

• A graduate student has been on hunger strike since November 2 to call for Wolfe's removal. But what really raised the pressure on Wolfe was the announcement by Missouri's football team on Sunday that the players would go on strike until Wolfe left.

  [Washington Post / Philip Bump]

• Wolfe resigned Monday morning; university chancellor R. Bowen Loftin followed him out Monday night.

  [NPR / Eyder Peralta]

• There have also been campus race protests at Yale this week; this piece from Dan Drezner is basically what you need to read about those.

  [Washington Post / Dan Drezner]

An election in Burma

(Lam Yik Fei/Getty Image)

• Burma has held its first open election in decades. Technically, final results are still "days away."

  [New York Times / Thomas Fuller]

• In practice, everyone appears to know it's a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi's party (the NLD) over the incumbent, military-backed USDP.

  [Reuters / Antoni Slodkowski and Timothy McLaughlin]

• The USDP has even conceded the election already. That may not mean much, though; Suu Kyi beat them in an election in 1990, and they ended up placing her under house arrest.

  [The Guardian / Simon Tisdall]

• Both sides have reputedly been vague about their platforms. But voters are too excited about the election to care.

  [Foreign Policy / Christian Caryl]

• And it remains to be seen whether the NLD will end the Burmese government's abuse of the country's Rohingya Muslims.

  [The Independent / David Doyle]

• But there's something to be said for democracy. This post by a Burmese filmmaker who was a toddler the last time the country had an election is highly recommended.

  [Coconuts Yangon / Lamin Oo]

A CAP for Netanyahu

(Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the US this week for a three-day trip.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The first stop: a meeting with President Obama, which I (Dara) can only imagine was super awkward, since basically everyone knows the two don't like each other at this point.

  [New York Times / Peter Baker and Jodi Rudoren]

• Netanyahu's most controversial stop, though, is at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. Pro-Israel conservatives think Netanyahu is debasing himself by visiting a group that has undermined his policies; anti-Netanyahu progressives think that CAP is debasing itself by inviting him.

  [Huffington Post / Jessica Schulberg and Ryan Grim]

• Even some Center for American Progress staffers appear uncomfortable with the Netanyahu speech, as the Intercept reports.

  [The Intercept / Glenn Greenwald]

• What's in it for Netanyahu? Surprisingly enough, his poll ratings at home. Israelis have soured on Netanyahu's handling of foreign policy — and his alienation of one of the US's major political parties is a big part of that.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

MISCELLANEOUS

Opponents of cash assistance always insist that it deters work. But evidence keeps piling up suggesting that just isn't true. [NYT / Eduardo Porter]

• Today I learned that during the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan, one candidate was accused of meddling with his rival's family tomb in an attempt to improve the feng shui of his own family tomb.

  [The Guardian / John Gittings]

• There are dozens of countries around the world with "all the trappings of a real country – a fixed population, a government, a flag, and a currency" that you'll never see on a world map. Here are just a few.

  [BBC / David Robson]

• Big foundations are moving away from giving to universities and museums and the like and toward investments to fight inequality and other major social ills.

  [NYT / David Gelles]

• Ben Carson's house sure has a lot of photos of Ben Carson in it.

  [The Guardian / Mark Makela]

VERBATIM

"A controversial procedure to limit the growth of severely disabled children to keep them forever small has begun to spread among families in America, Europe and beyond." [The Guardian / Ed Pilkington and Karen McVeigh]

• "Utilitarianism is more like a point counter in a video game, where you aim to accumulate as many points as you can within the bounds of reason. There’s no binary 'right' and 'wrong.' You just do the best you can."

  [Crucial Considerations / Brian Tomasik]

• "That’s the moment I want this guy to be in all the time. That moment of 'I thought I had everything figured out. No, I didn’t.'"

  [Aziz Ansari to AV Club / Erik Adams]

• "What she ultimately found, I think, is nothing. When I look at her art, I see a woman who was misled in many ways by herself."

  [Colin Wood to San Francisco Chronicle / Hugh Hart]

• "You have a shitty accent and you’re not even being racist correctly. If you’re gonna be racist, come correct with your racism."

  [Hasan Minhaj via Washington Post / Soraya Nadia McDonald]

WATCH THIS

We asked people about abortion. Their answers were powerful. [YouTube / Joe Posner]

(Vox/Joe Posner)

Correction: This post originally misidentified University of Missouri chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.

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