Benjamin P. Davis, Author at Public Seminar

Democracy

Are Universities Bad for Democracy?

We need a revolution, not only against how we train students to think but also, “more importantly, against what we, as humans, ultimately are.”

April 12, 2023 • by Benjamin P. Davis

Business schools obviously train students to see the world in terms of commodities. But what about the rest of the university? ...

Corporations

An Ethics of Refusal

Beyond “The Great Resignation”

November 14, 2022 • by Benjamin P. Davis

In the United States, we live in a country where someone who works for a law firm that services Big Oil is by and large considered intelligent and successful, maybe even ethical due to their pro bono representation, no matter that such a firm, for instance, did not represent foreclosure ...

Uncategorized

How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

Rejecting “the hollowness of American life”

March 11, 2021 • by Benjamin P. Davis

_____ I want to suggest here that shame can be more than a feeling that ends in self-judgment. It can also be a spur to live differently. In other words, shame is not simply, as is sometimes asserted, a political dead end. On the contrary, shame can be politically productive in ...

How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

Politics

How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

An ethical and aesthetic defense of Indigenous sovereignty

December 9, 2020 • by Benjamin P. Davis

It has become fashionable for some academics at some universities in North America to place at the end of their email signatures a nod to the Indigenous land that their institutions now occupy. Some concerned faculty write a statement of their own. Others—I think this is a better option—compose their statements ...

How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

Higher Ed

Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

The Framing of Racism in Higher Education

September 22, 2020 • by Benjamin P. Davis

------ When I was a graduate student at Emory University in 2018, the law school suspended a professor, Paul Zwier, for using the N-word in class. Zwier’s response to the suspension was strange. Inside Higher Ed reported on a letter in which he said, “I’m not sure whether I used the ...

Theory & Practice

Field Notes on “Sentencing the Present”

Diagnosing what is false without ceding what is beautiful

June 18, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin and Benjamin P. Davis

This is a final reflection by the curators of the seminar series “Sentencing the Present,” which was republished in full last week as “An Archive of a Crisis.” Because readers have asked us about the process and production of “Sentencing the Present,” when Public Seminar asked us to write a “post-mortem” ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 11, 2020 • by Lindsay Atnip, Benjamin Bernard, Audrey Borowski, Jonathon Catlin, Andrew Cole, Ayça Çubukçu, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Stephanie Degooyer, Christina Heatherton, Shannon Hoff, Bonnie Honig, Stephen Hopgood, Siddhant Issar, Joy James, Martin Jay, Susan Kang, Mark Kingwell, David Lloyd, Vincent Lloyd, Mac Loftin, John Lysaker, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Lissa McCullough, Zein Murib, Yasemin Sari, Mohammad Salama, Sarah Schulman, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Martin Shuster, Dara Z. Strolovitch, Enzo Traverso, Moira Weigel and Rocío Zambrana

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in ...

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 4, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Shannon Hoff, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Zein Murib, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Rocío Zambrana

This is the final seminar of the "Sentencing the Present" series. For previous seminars, see part one, part two, part three and part four. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Four

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 28, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Moira Weigel, Susan Kang, Martin Shuster, Audrey Borowski and Stephanie Degooyer

This seminar is part of an ongoing series. To read the previous issues in the "Sentencing the Present" series, see: part one, part two, and part three. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Three

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 22, 2020 • by Lindsay Atnip, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Christina Heatherton, David Lloyd, Mac Loftin and John Lysaker

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in a ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Two

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 14, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin, Ayça Çubukçu, Benjamin P. Davis, Stephen Hopgood, Siddhant Issar, Martin Jay, Lissa McCullough and Mohammad Salama

This seminar is part of an ongoing series. Read part one of "Sentencing the Present" here. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 7, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin, Andrew Cole, Benjamin P. Davis, Bonnie Honig, Joy James, Mark Kingwell, Vincent Lloyd, Sarah Schulman, Dara Z. Strolovitch and Enzo Traverso

In light of Marx’s 1843 conception of critical thought, how does your perspective contribute to “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age”? In a time of social breakdown and uncertainty, we find that critique comes almost too easily. Hence we also take inspiration from the historian E. ...