On June 10, David Brat, an unknown professor of economics at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, shocked the American political establishment by defeating House majority leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia’s seventh Congressional district.

A few weeks ago, three Israeli friends and I were planning a trip to Rome, but none of them had passports. When they finally excitedly received them in the mail, we all sat down to compare. Looking at my passport, my friend, Noy, turned to me and said, “What I would do for an American passport!” At first I sarcastically suggested that she must be jealous of the pretty pictures of landscapes from around the country that U.S. passports have on each page. When I asked what she meant, she said, “It must be nice to have the United States of America behind you.”

Dear editors of the Tech and members of the MIT community: