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

Feature

Is Football a Metaphor for Political Culture?

A Letter to Frank Bruni

January 24, 2018 • by Claire Potter

Dear Frank Bruni, You and I have a lot in common. We are both gay. We are both white. We are both card-carrying members of the well-educated, Northeastern, liberal elite. We both voted for Hillary Clinton (OK, my politics are to the left of yours and I voted for Bernie Sanders ...

Is Football a Metaphor for Political Culture?

Uncategorized

What Makes a Great Proposal for the AHA Annual Meeting?

Call for submissions

January 22, 2018 • by Claire Potter and Brian Ogilvie

Chairing a conference program committee is a humbling experience, both because of the fine people in it, and because of the opportunities it provides to encounter thoughtful and engaging scholarship. Building the program of the American Historical Association’s annual meeting, especially, offers an opportunity to see what our colleagues are ...

What Makes a Great Proposal for the AHA Annual Meeting?

Education

The Campus Speech Wars

You have conservative students, so teach them

January 17, 2018 • by Claire Potter

In the coming weeks, I want to write more about the meaning of free speech, how we understand free speech differently depending on how and where we are positioned, and whether our difficulty in listening to--and understanding--each other is a crucial context for exercising our first amendment rights. But since ...

Feature

Oprah for President?

Can a celebrity’s civic religion heal our divided nation?

January 10, 2018 • by Claire Potter

I turned off #GoldenGlobes2018 about 45 minutes into the show. I was impressed by what I was hearing from the awards stand. But I was also offended by Seth Meyers’ repeated jabs at Kevin Spacey, the only gay man other than the elderly George Takei to have been accused of ...

Feature

What Do We Want from the News?

Steven Spielberg’s The Post

January 3, 2018 • by Claire Potter

What do we want from the news? This strikes me as an increasingly important question as the task of actually getting the news requires that we sift gigabytes of knowledge, errata, and trash all mixed up together on the Internet. Do we want to be entertained by the news, as David ...

Feature

Rebuilding Democracy in 2018

Learning #purple politics from the history of American conservatism

December 27, 2017 • by Claire Potter

In October, almost a year after the election that brought us Donald Trump, I was at the Library of Congress immersed in the archive of a man named Paul Weyrich, and thinking about the long aftermath of political catastrophe. Weyrich, some of you may recall, was a squeaky-clean political consultant ...

Feature

The Politics of Sex at Universities

Cases can be closed by firing faculty, but conversations shouldn’t be

December 20, 2017 • by Claire Potter

In the past several years, the wave of sexual harassment revelations that have hit educational, along with media, corporate, political, and athletic, institutions has claimed our attention over and over. Readers of Public Seminar know that the New School has not been exempt from the spotlight trained on private behavior that has ...

Feature

Title IX Investigations and Sexual Harassment at The New School

A letter from the editors of Public Seminar

December 14, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Claire Potter

A faculty member has resigned from The New School for Social Research prior to the conclusion of a Title IX investigation. We have received inquiries from faculty and students who wish to publish at Public Seminar responses and reflections about sexual harassment at our own university. This is new territory for us as ...

Education

Don’t Tax Tuition Waivers

American Historical Association urges action for graduate student funding

December 14, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Targeted Outreach to Conferees Since the conference committee members have been announced, we have begun targeted outreach to our advocates in the states and districts of the Republican members, encouraging them to write or call their Members of Congress. If your representative is among the committee members listed below, we encourage you ...

Feature

Alabama, Goddamn

Join the progressives who rallied the vote for Doug Jones

December 13, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Goddamn. I mean, goddamn! I just want to come on down and hug all of you. Welcome back to Purple America, Alabama. We love you. OK -- without Wikipedia, can you name the last Senator elected as a Democrat from Alabama? If you said "Howell Heflin" you win. Heflin, who was first elected ...

Feature

Is It Just a Cake?

History helps us understand what is at stake in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case

December 6, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Given that context, the neighborly approach would be to say: “Fine, we won’t compel you to do something you believe violates your sacred principles. But we would like to hire you to bake other cakes for us. We would like to invite you into our home for dinner and bake ...

Feature

Death and Taxes

While Trump shrinks the state, the tax reform bill wobbles to a vote

November 29, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Yet -- before we turn to taxes -- it is worth pointing out that, in addition to trying to pack the judiciary with conservatives, certain ways of doing nothing matter. That almost a third of ambassadorships and 300 top State department positions have gone unfilled, on top of the 2,000 jobs cut by ...