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

Politics

I Am Ignoring Amy Coney Barrett

And you should too — because she will be confirmed, Trump is trolling us with this nomination, and we have an election to win

September 28, 2020 • by Claire Potter

I doubt that Barrett drinks a lot of beer or is prone to nasty sexual behaviors. The only thing that could stop her confirmation is a new and damaging revelation about the charismatic, evangelical Catholic group, People of Praise, to which she and her family belong. This is unlikely, and ...

Politics

Covering SCOTUS in the Age of Trump

A conversation with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick

August 27, 2020 • by Dahlia Lithwick and Claire Potter

Yet in the final days of the last session, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, voted with the liberal minority in two key cases. Philosophically committed to consensus-building, this is something Roberts has done at key moments since 2016, raising questions about whether he had taken Kennedy’s ...

North America

Public Seminar Books Presents: A Conversation with Eric Alterman

Hosted by co-executive editor Claire Potter, the topic is politics and Alterman’s new book, “Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie -And Why Trump is Worse” (Basic Books, 2020)

August 13, 2020 • by Claire Potter

If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he lies. But he’s by no means the first president to do so. In Lying in State, Eric Alterman asks how we ended up with such a pathologically dishonest commander in chief, showing that, from early on, the United States ...

Public Seminar Books Presents: A Conversation with Eric Alterman

Event

Public Seminar Presents | Lincoln on the Verge, with Historian Ted Widmer

A Public Seminar book talk

July 15, 2020 • by Claire Potter

On the eve of his 52nd birthday, February 11, 1861, the President-elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, walked onto a train, the first step of his journey to the White House, and his rendezvous with destiny. But as the train began to carry Lincoln toward Washington, it was far from ...

Public Seminar Presents | Lincoln on the Verge, with Historian Ted Widmer

Climate & Ecology

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

A webinar view, featuring author Debjani Bhattacharyya and commenter Kasia Paprocki

July 15, 2020 • by Claire Potter

The event was hosted and moderated by Claire Potter, co-executive editor at Public Seminar & professor of history at The New School for Social Research. Save the date: our next Public Seminar book talk is on Wednesday, July 22, featuring Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to ...

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

From the Editors

American Dream

We celebrate Independence Day with quiet determination this year as we continue the fight for everyone’s freedom

July 3, 2020 • by Claire Potter

On July 3, 1776, the 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress, many of them slaveholders, took a step over the void in the Philadelphia State House. Exactly one year earlier, George Washington, a veteran of the King’s service and now a General commissioned by rebels had taken charge of ...

History

Public Seminar Presents: Becoming Free, Becoming Black

On July 1, Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross join your host, Claire Potter, to discuss their new book about race, law, and citizenship

June 28, 2020 • by Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela Gross and Claire Potter

How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020) tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their loved ones. ...

Public Seminar Presents: Becoming Free, Becoming Black

From the Editors

How to Topple a Monument

And other thoughts about history

June 26, 2020 • by Claire Potter

On May 31, 2020, Sarah Parcak, an archeologist at the University of Alabama-Birmingham took the popular temperature and, like any good historian, recognized the need for a little public engagement. “PSA For ANYONE who might be interested in how to pull down an obelisk* safely,” Parcak tweeted, “from an Egyptologist ...

History

Jesus Loves Drag

How New York City got its Drag March

June 19, 2020 • by Brian Griffin and Claire Potter

The Stonewall riots that took place in New York in June 1969 are widely credited with catalyzing the modern LGBT+ movement. In “Kicking and Screaming: Stonewall at 50,” the Exiles on 12th Street podcast celebrated the anniversary with our guest Brian Griffin (aka Harmonie Moore Must Die). Griffin co-founded the ...

From the Editors

What Is John Roberts Up To?

Voting with liberals in two important civil rights cases, the Chief Justice seems to be invoking a version of the Garland rule: award no policy victories in the last year of a presidential term

June 19, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Three days ago, the first pre-election blow to Trumpism arrived. In a 6-3 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch (a Donald Trump appointee) voting with the majority, the Court ruled that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights act does make discrimination in the employment ...

Event

Land, Water, and Humans in the Bengal Delta

A Public Seminar Book Talk | Debjani Bhattacharyya, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

June 13, 2020 • by Claire Potter

What happens when a distant colonial power tries to tame an unfamiliar terrain in the world's largest tidal delta? This history of dramatic ecological changes in the Bengal Delta from 1760 to 1920 involves land, water and humans, tracing the stories and struggles that link them together. Pushing beyond narratives ...

Land, Water, and Humans in the Bengal Delta

From the Editors

From Reaction to Reflection

We know that racism is structural–what vision for change will prevail?

June 12, 2020 • by Claire Potter

In 1962, James Baldwin described what it was like to make the turn from childhood to adulthood as a black man. His male peers, he wrote in the New Yorker, seemed lost, and unable to say what it was that oppressed them, except that they knew it was `the man’—the white ...

Claire Potter

I Am Ignoring Amy Coney Barrett

And you should too — because she will be confirmed, Trump is trolling us with this nomination, and we have an election to win

Covering SCOTUS in the Age of Trump

A conversation with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick

Public Seminar Books Presents: A Conversation with Eric Alterman

Hosted by co-executive editor Claire Potter, the topic is politics and Alterman’s new book, “Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie -And Why Trump is Worse” (Basic Books, 2020)

Public Seminar Presents | Lincoln on the Verge, with Historian Ted Widmer

A Public Seminar book talk

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

A webinar view, featuring author Debjani Bhattacharyya and commenter Kasia Paprocki

American Dream

We celebrate Independence Day with quiet determination this year as we continue the fight for everyone’s freedom

Public Seminar Presents: Becoming Free, Becoming Black

On July 1, Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross join your host, Claire Potter, to discuss their new book about race, law, and citizenship

How to Topple a Monument

And other thoughts about history

Jesus Loves Drag

How New York City got its Drag March

What Is John Roberts Up To?

Voting with liberals in two important civil rights cases, the Chief Justice seems to be invoking a version of the Garland rule: award no policy victories in the last year of a presidential term

Land, Water, and Humans in the Bengal Delta

A Public Seminar Book Talk | Debjani Bhattacharyya, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

From Reaction to Reflection

We know that racism is structural–what vision for change will prevail?

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