Feature Archives - Page 3 of 150

Feature

Assessing the Macri Legacy

How four years of economic policy matter for the upcoming elections

September 17, 2019 • by Michael A. Cohen

One of the most critical decisions that started this downward spiral was Macri’s rollback of “retenciones” or taxes on agricultural exports, primarily soy, that had been increased during the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2008. This reduction in public revenue of about US$2 billion a year immediately ...

Feature

FBI on College Campuses, John Bolton, and Technology and Women’s Voices

Past Present Episode 196

September 17, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The FBI has urged U.S. universities to monitor certain students and scholars visiting from China. Natalia referred to this history of spying on campus from the Harvard Crimson.National security adviser John Bolton is the latest Trump appointee to have left the administration. Neil referred to this New Yorker profile of Mike ...

Blue Monday

Warren is Not Too Late

Of course Jacobin prefers Sanders, but this does not make him the obvious candidate of the broad democratic left

September 16, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Kilpatrick and Sunkara’s argument is complicated, and somewhat convoluted (they say “paradoxical”), and boils down to this: while Warren is passe because her vision is grounded in the failed promises of financial regulation under the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that can be traced back to the politics ...

Feature

What is at Stake in Argentina’s Elections

A Series

September 16, 2019 • by Guillermina Altomonte and Lucas Ballestín

Beyond the economic debates animating the campaign (between Macri’s more restricted business-friendly form of the welfare state, and Fernandez’ mirror opposite: a sovereigntist, Keynesian Industrial Policy focused narrative), the campaign invokes debates about social justice and national sovereignty. For historical reasons, the Fernandez ticket links the presence and activity of ...

Feature

The Pilgrim and the Spectator

attraverso il buco della serratura

September 13, 2019 • by Ido Nahari

Through this embellished gap the frozen image of the eternal city is shown to the visitor’s eye. Curtains of gardened grass frame the setting, accompanied by the copper green dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica, the pinnacle of Roman Catholicism; one of the many centers of the world. This still image, ...

Education

The New School’s Long Road to a Four-Year College

100 years in, the New School’s experimental ethos lives on

September 12, 2019 • by Mark Larrimore

Most American universities start as 4-year colleges, eventually adding masters and doctoral programs, professional schools and conservatories, and ultimately continuing-ed programs. The New School did things pretty much back to front. It took the better part of its first 100 years to establish a 4-year undergraduate college. This wasn’t an ...

The New School’s Long Road to a Four-Year College

Feature

The Demons of Neoliberalism

Adam Kotsko’s Political Theology

September 11, 2019 • by Luke Mergner

This critique was left tantalizingly underdeveloped in The Prince of this World. How could more freedom make us less free? Neoliberalism's Demons answers this question by reading neoliberalism through the lens of political theology. The result is not a new history of neoliberalism but a refocusing on how such an economic system makes ...

Feature

Franco Columbu, Kamala Harris, and NYC’s Gifted and Talented Program

Past Present Episode 195

September 10, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Italian bodybuilding icon Franco Columbu has died. Niki referred to the film Pumping Iron, in which he appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Natalia cited the importance of physician Kenneth Cooper’s 1968 book Aerobics in both mainstreaming the idea of working out and challenging the pre-eminence of weightlifting ...

Feature

The Aspirations and Ambiguities of De-Colonial Politics

Imran Khan’s First Year as Pakistan’s Prime Minister

September 10, 2019 • by SherAli Tareen

Imran Khan’s ascension as Prime Minister of Pakistan in August 2018 preceded and instigated an avalanche of alarming prognoses issued by a range of motley characters. Their convergence made for an interesting union of otherwise incompatible bedfellows. Self-anointed Pakistan experts at neo-conservative U.S. think-tanks, editorials of mainstream Western media, South ...

Blue Monday

Is “Motherfucker” The Concept Political Science Now Needs?

An Immodest Proposal

September 9, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Is “Motherfucker” the concept that political science now needs? The question is a serious one. And the answer, I suggest in all seriousness, is “yes.” Kind of. We live in troubled times. The June 16, 2018 cover of The Economist stated the trouble clearly: “How strongmen subvert democracy.” The September/October cover of Foreign Affairs also puts it well: “Autocracy Now.” But ...

Feature

My Butch Career: An Interview With Esther Newton

Resisting gender conformity, coming out in the nineteen-seventies, and fighting for world liberation.

September 9, 2019 • by Theresa Smalec and Esther Newton

I interviewed Esther Newton about her new memoir, My Butch Career on June 20, 2019. Newton earned her PhD in 1968 and published Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (1972), the first major anthropological study of a gay-identified community in America. Though she researched drag queen culture and desired women sexually, Newton resisted the norms of ...

Feature

Twisted Logic

Polish conservatism and the ‘LGBT-free zones’

September 6, 2019 • by Beata Zwierzyńska

I live in a country where one of the worst atrocities occurred, the Holocaust, where Jews, Poles, Soviets, Romani, and gay people were killed. Declaring zones "free" from any human being brings an immediate connotation with the Nazi persecution of the Jews before World War II, the ghettos during the ...