Co-Executive Editor, Public Seminar and Professor of History, The New School for Social Research

Columnists

We Don’t Need a Commission to Study January 6

We need a functioning government. National commissions rarely solve the problems they are formed to address–and often, they create new ones

June 2, 2021 • by Claire Potter

On Friday, May 9, the Senate failed to pass a bill establishing a bipartisan federal commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, an insurrection intended to block Joe Biden from being inaugurated as president. The cloture vote was 54-35, six votes shy of the number needed to bring the ...

We Don’t Need a Commission to Study January 6

Columnists

What Campus Police Really Do

Private university security forces do mostly deliver social services—and it’s a problem

May 26, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ This week marks a year since former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. In the twelve months since a renewed Black Lives Matter movement brought lethal racism back to the forefront of white America’s consciousness, many of us who are white have learned to see policing, at its most ...

Economy

It’s Time to Ask New Questions About Boycotts

Named after an obscure English estate agent, a tactic that harnesses consumer power to make political change has had many incarnations

May 18, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ In 1880, the harvest in County Mayo, Ireland, was so poor that it seemed unlikely that the tenant farmers on lands held by English absentee landowner Lord Erne would be able to pay their rents. Graciously (he thought), Erne offered them a ten percent reduction. Energized by a fairness campaign ...

It’s Time to Ask New Questions About Boycotts

Politics

That We Love Our Country More

In defeat, Liz Cheney seizes the high ground and declares war on the Party of Trump

May 12, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Nobody—much less Cheney herself—imagined that there would be a last-minute deal that would keep her in the Republican leadership. And there wasn’t. Within 20 minutes of the Republican caucus gaveling in its regular 9:00 AM Wednesday meeting, Liz Cheney was removed from leadership by a quick voice vote. Virginia Foxx (NC-5) ...

Democracy

Why is Caitlyn Jenner Running for Governor of California?

Recall campaigns, invented to remove incompetent or corrupt politicians, are now a conservative tactic to reverse Democratic electoral victories

May 5, 2021 • by Claire Potter

On April 22, Caitlyn Jenner announced that she had filed paperwork to register herself as a candidate for Governor of California in a recall election against the sitting governor, Gavin Newsom. The organizers will likely meet the threshold of verified signatures, and the election is likely to be scheduled for early fall. Even ...

Why is Caitlyn Jenner Running for Governor of California?

Politics

Are Liberals Hurting Children?

No–but distracting voters is an old conservative strategy and the conspiracy theories are getting weirder

April 29, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ This week, a story has come out of Florida that would be shocking, except, of course, that the event in question happened in Florida. First reported by Patricia Mazzei at the New York Times, and then by a team at the Miami Herald, it illuminated the conspiracy theory that the Covid-19 vaccination, vital to school ...

Race

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

At last, a policeman is held accountable for murdering a Black American. But the process of imagining an end to lethal policing has only begun

April 21, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ My greatest fear as I waited for the verdict in the George Floyd case yesterday was not that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin wasn’t going to be convicted of something. The prosecution had carefully left two back doors open for the jury, alternative charges that would have allowed the ...

Columnists

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Claims that children are being harmed are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don’t have to feel bad about racism

April 20, 2021 • by Claire Potter

Late last week, Paul Rossi, a member of the mathematics faculty at Grace Church School in lower Manhattan, denounced the social justice and anti-racism program instituted by the school in 2020. Before writing this essay, published on Bari Weiss’s contrarian Substack, Common Sense, Rossi was already in hot water. By ...

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Politics

Dan Crenshaw’s Eye

As he recovers from sight-saving surgery, will the second-term Texas congressman reflect on the health insurance that other Americans don’t have?

April 12, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Last week, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R, TX-2) sent out a quietly heartbreaking press release. It notified constituents and colleagues that Crenshaw would be temporarily out of commission as doctors work to save his one partially-functioning eye. OK, you may not like Crenshaw very much: I don’t. He is a Trump baby, elected ...

The Internet

Glenn Greenwald Punches Down

Worse, when he attacked an intern for USA Today, this established and wealthy journalist also threw the truth under the bus

April 1, 2021 • by Claire Potter

My disappointment with Glenn Greenwald, who I once admired for his work on the Snowden revelations, escalates. Watch as Greenwald, who has 1.6 million followers, deliberately exposes a recent college graduate, a woman, to a screaming mob of trolls on March 28, 2021: Screenshot via Glenn Greenwald's Twitter @ggreenwald. What a bully. More importantly, ...

Columnists

Our Nation Is a Shooting Gallery

But anyone who pretends there’s nothing we can do is lying

March 25, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Yesterday I began to see the tweets, again: people who had left their houses that day to do something unremarkable were dying. Friends at the University of Colorado-Boulder expressed fear, horror, and confusion as another mass shooting unfolded at a supermarket near their campus. Later, I learned that ten people, ...

Politics

Andrew Cuomo’s Female Enablers

Powerful men have recruited successful women to shield and defend them for decades – but other feminists are seeing the bigger picture

March 18, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ The scandals in the New York governor’s office have exploded. One sexual harassment allegation has become multiple allegations. The cover-up of nursing home deaths from Covid-19 is now prompting a broader inquiry into Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic. And all of these allegations have ripped back the curtain on ...

Claire Potter

We Don’t Need a Commission to Study January 6

We need a functioning government. National commissions rarely solve the problems they are formed to address–and often, they create new ones

What Campus Police Really Do

Private university security forces do mostly deliver social services—and it’s a problem

It’s Time to Ask New Questions About Boycotts

Named after an obscure English estate agent, a tactic that harnesses consumer power to make political change has had many incarnations

That We Love Our Country More

In defeat, Liz Cheney seizes the high ground and declares war on the Party of Trump

Why is Caitlyn Jenner Running for Governor of California?

Recall campaigns, invented to remove incompetent or corrupt politicians, are now a conservative tactic to reverse Democratic electoral victories

Are Liberals Hurting Children?

No–but distracting voters is an old conservative strategy and the conspiracy theories are getting weirder

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

At last, a policeman is held accountable for murdering a Black American. But the process of imagining an end to lethal policing has only begun

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Claims that children are being harmed are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don’t have to feel bad about racism

Glenn Greenwald Punches Down

Worse, when he attacked an intern for USA Today, this established and wealthy journalist also threw the truth under the bus

Our Nation Is a Shooting Gallery

But anyone who pretends there’s nothing we can do is lying

Andrew Cuomo’s Female Enablers

Powerful men have recruited successful women to shield and defend them for decades – but other feminists are seeing the bigger picture

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