Feature Archives - Page 16 of 150

Education

New School Gestalt and its Hidden Sociology

Anatole Broyard at The New School

April 16, 2019 • by Mark Larrimore

Because they were displaced themselves, or angry with us for failing to understand history, the professors did their best to make us feel like exiles in our own country. … All the courses I took were about what's wrong: what's wrong with our government, with the family, with interpersonal relations ...

New School Gestalt and its Hidden Sociology

Blue Monday

Further Thoughts on Why I Hope Biden Goes Away

He offers too little, beyond nostalgia, at a time when much is called for.

April 15, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Last week I offered a critique of a Joe Biden candidacy that centered on the idea that “he is looking backward at a time when we need to move forward, and he is inviting the Democratic Party, and the American public, to move backward with him.” I stand by this argument; ...

Further Thoughts on Why I Hope Biden Goes Away

Feature

Artist-as-debtor, Debt-as-Creator

The unseen debt sustaining the art market

April 15, 2019 • by Noah Fischer

This article is part of a series of texts published on Public Seminar in the lead-up to the Digital/Debt/Empire symposium in Vancouver in late April 2019, convened by Benjamin Anderson, Enda Brophy and Max Haiven. Is there a better place to glimpse the logic of capitalism than at art fairs, those ultra luxury trade shows ...

Feature

Rebalancing Housing Court’s Scales of Justice

The First Year of New York’s ‘Right to Counsel’ Law

April 13, 2019 • by Oksana Mironova

A right to free legal representation in eviction cases -- combined with other important tenant protection measures -- is significantly rebalancing the scales of justice in New York City Housing Court and helping keep low-income residents in their homes. That’s the clear message of the first full year’s results of the ...

Rebalancing Housing Court’s Scales of Justice

Feature

How to Beat a Populist

Populists’ biggest strength is a weak opposition

April 12, 2019 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

The progressive reformer Zuzana Čaputová’s victory in Slovakia's presidential election suggests that populists' biggest strength is a weak opposition. If her winning formula is adopted elsewhere, populist forces' recent gains in Western democracies could be reversed. There have never been more populist governments in place than today. Until now, populists have ...

Education

Why Teachers Are Striking in Poland

Faced with the biggest strike since 1993, the Polish government suggested teachers get pregnant and collect a child-care benefit

April 12, 2019 • by Beata Zwierzyńska

“We want to teach, we want to work. Please, understand us.” —Teachers’ general strike in Poland, 2019 Poland’s striking teachers have three messages for the right-wing government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party: we care about the future of education, we are fighting for our dignity, and we are definitely fighting ...

Feature

The Inherent Violence of the Mining Industry

What two recent disasters in Brazil tell us about the neoextractivist economy

April 11, 2019 • by Mariana Prandini Assis

When three years ago the Fundão dam burst in Mariana, a city located in the state of Minas Gerais, it was deemed the worst mining disaster in Brazilian history. As affected communities and nature still struggle to recover, and victims continue their fight for just reparation, last January another social-environmental episode occurred ...

The Inherent Violence of the Mining Industry

Feature

In Defense of Do What You Love

Rejoining alienated critiques of capitalism

April 11, 2019 • by Patrick Sheehan

But where did this “most elegant anti-worker ideology,” as Tokumitsu calls it, come from? Tokumitsu suggests that it is a bourgeois culture foisted upon the working masses by the ruling class. One New York Times opinion piece credits “neoliberal masterminds,” while another points the finger at WeWork. What these critics agree on is that the ...

Feature

Release Mueller

Demonstrators gather in Lafayette Park calling for the release of the report

April 10, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

Progressive groups brought thousands of people to hundreds of places around the country to demand the release of the Mueller report. Although the call to demonstrate came with more notice than the one to Protect Mueller last fall, the turnout was lower. About 500 hundred people came to Lafayette Park, across from ...

Feature

Reparations, Leggings, and Nipsey Hussle

Past Present Episode 174

April 9, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki discuss the case for reparations, why leggings are so controversial, and the legacy of rapper Nipsey Hussle. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Reparations for slavery have gained renewed currency among policymakers. Neil referred to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 essay, “The Case ...

Reparations, Leggings, and Nipsey Hussle

Feature

Writing for Us: Mira Jacob’s Good Talk

The New School author and artist on her new graphic memoir

April 9, 2019 • by Mira Jacob and Liz Sheldon

The title of Mira Jacob’s graphic memoir, Good Talk: A Memoir In Conversations (One World, 2019), succinctly sums up the framework of her book, a collection of messy, hilarious, confusing, and gutting conversations Jacob has with her loved ones about everything from coming into her own as a writer to ...

Blue Monday

Bye Bye Biden

The weakness of his entire candidacy is that he is looking backward at a time when we need to move forward

April 8, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

“The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic.” – Søren Kierkegaard There is much suffering in the Age of Trump. The principal source of grief is Trump himself: what he does and doesn’t do, what he says and doesn’t say, and what and who is ...