Tempest Tossed Episode 10

The Trump Administration’s Assault on Gender Asylum

Two actions of the Trump Administration have sought to make it practically impossible for women who are victims of intimate partner violence to apply for and be granted asylum in the United States. The first is an action by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to overturn a decision of the Board of ...
Read More
Placeholder

An Assassination in Poland

Charity and madness in times of hate

Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdańsk, was fatally stabbed on Sunday while standing on the stage in the center of the city during the finale of the Grand Orchestra of Christmas Charity winter drive, Poland’s largest and until now most joyous charity event. Although immediately hospitalized, he died Monday. Everyone instantly ...
Read More
An Assassination in Poland

University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Indiana University instructs faculty to comply with all laws and regulations regarding foreign influences

I just received the letter at bottom in a mass e-mailing to Indiana University faculty. It instructs faculty about the importance of complying with all laws and regulations regarding the disclosure of “foreign influences.” The sender, a high official of the University, is also a smart colleague who I respect. And ...
Read More
University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Why a Green New Deal is a Great Idea

It links public responsibility, ecological sanity, and economic justice at a moment of manifest political irresponsibility

We are now entering the fourth week of Donald Trump’s most recent historic achievement in the ongoing horror show that is his presidency: the federal government has for all intents and purposes ceased to function. Damon Linker summarized it well in a recent column: In a little under three weeks, the shutdown has ...
Read More
Why a Green New Deal is a Great Idea

Good for Grassroots, Bad for Business

How long can the business community in the United States tolerate Donald Trump as president?

Back in the mid-1990s, the Clinton Administration embraced a so-called “royalty holiday” for oil companies that developed leases in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The idea was pretty simple: rather than impose royalties of 12 1/2% to 16 2/3% for developing publicly-owned resources (already paltry by international ...
Read More
Good for Grassroots, Bad for Business

A Geopolitical Catastrophe for Ukraine: 1918

Experimenting with counterfactual history allows us to reconsider simple questions and search for more precise answers

What could have happened had a local war for Lviv not drawn forces away from the Ukrainian revolution in 1918? Experimenting with counterfactual history allows us to reconsider simple questions and search for more precise answers. When we recall 1918, within the context of Polish-Ukrainian relations, the first thing that springs ...
Read More
A Geopolitical Catastrophe for Ukraine: 1918

Budget Watch

If New York’s economy slows, reality-based budgeting must prevail

Two years ago, the outlook for New Yorkers was bleak on the political side but brighter on the economic front. Today, the trends appear to have reversed. The midterm election results portend more hopeful changes in Albany and, the effects of the partial federal government shutdown notwithstanding, Washington. On the ...
Read More
Budget Watch

Why We Need to Listen to Rashida Tlaib

Defending liberal democracy from Trumpism is not a distraction for the Left

Last week saw the swearing in of the new, Democratic-controlled Congress, the fruit of the “blue wave” that swept across the country last November. The 116th Congress has been rightly hailed as “historic” for its demographic diversity. The country’s first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was re-elected, and ...
Read More
Why We Need to Listen to Rashida Tlaib

President as Prisoner

Trump has walled himself into a losing position 

Back in 1989 Bill Grover published a great book, The President as Prisoner. In that book, Grover argued that, regardless of who occupied the position of President, that person was likely to be seriously constrained by political pressures and institutional constraints. Politically, the president is constrained by powerful interest groups, especially ...
Read More
President as Prisoner

The New History of Capitalism

And what it owes to poststructuralism

Where did the new history of capitalism come from? I would like to break from the common sense narrative and argue that the new history of capitalism should not be understood as rooted in or as a response to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Certainly the crisis drew attention to the field ...
Read More
The New History of Capitalism