Editor’s note

Dark Forces Erupting Into View

Ever since Byline Times started seven years ago, we have aimed to connect the immediate with the long term; to show how breaking news is not just ‘the first draft of history’ but a telling symptom of deeper, underlying forces.

To highlight that, I’ve often used the metaphor of plate tectonics.

Seismic geological events do not occur randomly out of the blue. Earthquakes happen when the underlying plates of rock rub together, and volcanoes erupt when they pull apart.

The explosive events of this summer, as the different stories of two Cambridge professors hit the headlines, have been a vivid testimony to that.