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

Feature

A Public Seminar Thanksgiving

Looking back, looking forward

November 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Claire Potter

In past years we have had some great Thanksgiving posts from Mackenzie Wark, Jeremy Varon and Jeff Goldfarb. Claire Potter, at her old Tenured Radical perch, used to occasionally give out awards to the top ten "turkeys" of the year: for a blast from the blogging past, you can see them here and ...

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Can A Republican Have Progressive Values?

Bob Holden, New York City Councilman from Queens, says yes

November 22, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Again, what's not to love? Well, since you asked... Mayor de Blasio, who won an overpowering mandate for a second term, does not love him. Last fall, Holden -- a lifetime registered Democrat -- primaried Elizabeth Crowley, a cousin of Queens Democratic powerbroker Joseph Crowley, and lost. Fair enough. But then ...

Feature

What Happens Now?

Naomi Klein, No is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

November 16, 2017 • by Claire Potter

It’s a year after the American Election Day that shook the world, and a new book that seeks to explain the disaster of Donald Trump’s victory drops every few weeks. We political historians are scrambling to keep up. Last month, Hillary Clinton’s What Happened? hit the stands. How does it feel to ...

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Can Roy Moore’s Candidacy Survive?

If it does, Jesus will have had nothing to do with it

November 15, 2017 • by Claire Potter

The most vigorous defense of Moore, who has been accused of groping girls as young as fourteen, has come from another Alabama public official. "Take Joseph and Mary," Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler told the Washington Examiner, on November 9. "Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. ...

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A Year Later, Democrats Roar Back

Post-election analysis, and inaugurating Purple Wednesday

November 8, 2017 • by Claire Potter

It wasn't just Donald Trump's unexpected win over Hillary Clinton, but the year of political rancor and division that had set me adrift. I have friends and colleagues, mostly those who -- quite properly -- viewed Clinton's defeat as a bitter reflection of their own encounters with sexism, and who ...

Education

Syllabus: From Goldwater to Trump

A Political History of Tea Party America

November 1, 2017 • by Claire Potter

In order to think this through with students, I re-did the course, and the syllabus below that I am teaching this fall is what I came up with. ___________________________________________________ This course is a survey of United States political history and domestic policy that puts the evolution of the American presidency at its ...

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The Manafort Indictment

Twelve Counts — and I’m Still Counting

October 31, 2017 • by Claire Potter

For those of us who have been waiting almost a year for some good news, yesterday's indictment of Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates was a real lift. The bonus news that someone who had been flying under the radar -- George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the ...

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What Is The Purpose of Incarceration?

Introducing Year Two of an NEH Enduring Questions Course

October 4, 2017 • by Claire Potter

The question I chose was: "What is the purpose of incarceration?" The course is now in its second year, and this fall I am teaching it online. This is a very different experience from the onsite classroom (something I will write about in subsequent posts), but as part of the ...

Feature

After 9/11 — What?

A Historian Contemplates the Future of Memory

September 11, 2017 • by Claire Potter

My editorial colleague Jeff Goldfarb told me yesterday that he was going to re-publish one of his reflections from September 11, 2001, and I decided to do so too. But I didn't become a blogger until 2006, and then, it appears -- perhaps because, however schmaltzy, commemorations of the attack ...

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Why Colin Kaepernick Isn’t Working

Football’s Sketchy Labor History

September 7, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Football may be entertainment for most of us, but it is labor for those who play it, a kind of work that requires as much preparation and discipline as any academic or white collar professional training. In fact, many parents begin fantasizing about an NFL career when their children are ...

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How to Survive a Nuclear Attack

A Practical Guide from the 1950s

August 14, 2017 • by Claire Potter

With all the cheerful talk last week about a nuclear confrontation with North Korea, a number of people in my social media feeds have been obsessing about how much our collective civil defense skills have eroded since the 1960s. However, a quick trip to the National Archives digital collections has ...

Feature

What Are the Costs of Libertarianism?

Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, Revisited

August 10, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking Press, 2017.) Democracy in Chains, historian Nancy MacLean's account of James McGill Buchanan and public choice economics, has caused an unusual stir in the few months since its publication. You may have followed the lengthy ...