
sponsored by The Boston Foundation
Explore Massachusetts’ vibrant political and civic landscape with incisive commentary from legislators, local activists, seasoned political analysts, and interested residents across the Bay State.
CommonWealth Voices aims to be a beacon of robust discourse, offering a platform for analysis and advocacy on the challenges and aspirations of political life in Massachusetts.

The Boston Foundation is deeply committed to civic leadership, and essential to our work is the exchange of informed opinions. We are proud to partner on a platform that engages such a broad range of demographic and ideological viewpoints.
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We welcome informed commentary about local, state and national public policy. Please include the author’s contact information when submitting.
Beacon Hill’s new rules are good. They should follow them. Â
Everyday people–and not just advocates deep in the trenches–are seeing that things need to change. Â
Why are we looking to deport ambition?Â
These students are tomorrow’s nurses, engineers, teachers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Driving them from classrooms is a moral failure, but also an economic one: It makes the next generation smaller, less educated, and less able to compete in a global economy that depends on talent and drive. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.Â
New graduation requirement must include rigorous statewide standards
Ensuring a reliable, objective measure of student competency must remain a top priority. Our students deserve rigorous statewide standards, not subjective benchmarks at a district’s discretion. Â
We can’t sit idle as Washington pulls the plug on the Massachusetts innovation economy
The Commonwealth needs to act boldly and creatively to respond to the threats to its innovation economy. Fighting to reverse these moves in Washington should be a top priority, but we surely can’t count on that happening.
State antisemitism commission report is a strong call to action
The recommendations of the antisemitism commission focus on Jewish students, because that is they who have an unprecedented need for timely, effective intervention.
The state commission on antisemitism doubles down on its mistakesÂ
The report’s concern is not with universal rights but with how anti-Israel speech makes some Jews feel, an approach that can only make antisemitism worse. It distracts from the interests that Jews share with all minorities in vigorous civil rights guarantees.
