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

North America

CFP: Remaking American Political History

June 6-7, 2019 Purdue University West Lafayette, IN

June 18, 2018 • by Claire Potter

American political history is thriving. Over the past two decades, an interdisciplinary examination of American political history has produced scholarship that explores the expansive spheres in which Americans engage in politics and relate to one another and the state. Now is the time to build on momentum in the field ...

CFP: Remaking American Political History

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When New York City Almost Failed

An Interview with Kim Phillips-Fein

June 13, 2018 • by Claire Potter and Kim Phillips-Fein

Earlier today, Public Seminar had the privilege of printing an excerpt of historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s recent book, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and The Rise of Austerity Politics. Originally published in 2017 by Metropolitan Books, it is now available in paperback from Picador. The book tells a complex story of ...

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Bill Clinton’s Symphony of Hypocrisy and Rage

Remembering Monica Lewinsky

June 6, 2018 • by Claire Potter

I used to love Bill Clinton (known in our household for years as The Big Dog) and now I just want someone to get him off the stage. Two days ago, in an interview with The Today Show's Craig Melvin about a new thriller co-written with James Patterson, former president William Jefferson ...

Bill Clinton’s Symphony of Hypocrisy and Rage

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Roseanne Bombs

Social change and the politics of laughter

May 30, 2018 • by Claire Potter

Yesterday I checked my Twitter feed and learned that Roseanne Barr had finally blown herself up. Up all night tweeting about Soros and Clinton conspiracy theories (including a bizarre exchange with the cool-headed Chelsea Clinton about whether her husband is a member of the Soros family), Barr capped off her literary ...

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Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

Reflections on the 1984 Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance

May 23, 2018 • by Claire Potter

When did coalitional organizing between feminists and conservative women become impossible? I’m not sure, but as a feminist there is one place and time that I remember vividly: Indianapolis in the spring of 1984. There, led by Mayor William Hudnut, III Republican politician Beulah Coughenour and local movement conservatives, that city ...

Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

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Royal Wedding Roundup

Princesses, tiaras, bunting, ex-girlfriends, and ludicrous hats

May 20, 2018 • by Claire Potter

At Public Seminar we are feminists, so we don't raise our daughters to be princesses. We are open-minded leftists, so we don't fawn over the ruling classes, but we don't long to guillotine them either. And we are anti-racists, so we haven't declared an end to racism worldwide just because a ...

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Elections Turn On Policy, Not Public Relations

To win back the House, Democrats need to show how they will make change

May 16, 2018 • by Claire Potter

My liberal and left-wing friends continue to puzzle over a single, unanswerable question: why do white, working class people vote "against their interests"? Perhaps the reason that this is an unanswerable question is that it is the wrong question. I would like to suggest that they don't vote against their ...

Elections Turn On Policy, Not Public Relations

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Understanding Conservative Political Incorrectness

A brief, and incomplete, intellectual history of identity politics on the right

May 9, 2018 • by Claire Potter

How do we understand the contemporary conservative pride in political incorrectness? One of the core principles of contemporary conservatism today is that identity -- race, gender, sexuality -- should neither entitle anyone to rights, nor imprison them in an ideology. Identity, conservatives argue, is something that liberals use to create constituencies ...

Understanding Conservative Political Incorrectness

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A Historian Obsessed With the Present

Political memoir changes the questions I ask of the past

May 2, 2018 • by Claire Potter

If, at some point, a new diagnosis is announced that describes people who can't stop purchasing and reading books about the 2016 presidential campaign, I could be one of the first to sign up for treatment. I imagine that while wellness professionals will recommend some combination of meditation and exercise, ...

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For Conservatives, It’s Stormy Weather

Is the GOP dividing over Trump’s scandalous personal life?

April 25, 2018 • by Claire Potter

Why are so many Christian conservatives refusing to criticize Donald Trump's pay to play sex life? The news of a $130,000 settlement made to porn star Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, via alleged fixer Michael Cohen, is only the latest episode in which conservative religious leaders and the voters they ...

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How to Learn from Conservatives

Stop talking and listen

April 18, 2018 • by Claire Potter

In February, I was able to attend the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference, held annually in a conference center outside Washington, D.C. I live blogged two days of general sessions, interviewed people, heard numerous speakers, and was present at a Trump rally. I had the opportunity to talk to a ...

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What Happened at the Lorraine Motel

America’s divisive politics did not begin with the last election

April 4, 2018 • by Claire Potter

When we think about our divided country, social media seems to be a prime culprit: my column last week addressed the ongoing revelations about Facebook, and the use of social media data to micro-target divisive messages to the American electorate during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Experts and ordinary voters are still ...