Feature Archives - Page 37 of 150

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We, the People, Must Vote

However imperfectly, the framers of the Constitution imagined the vote, not guns, as our most powerful right

October 31, 2018 • by Claire Potter

We the People of the United States… I have always been stirred by this phrase that begins the preamble of the United States Constitution: we, the people. What it meant was that this new chapter in politics would not be an extension of divine will and ruled by hereditary office ...

Feature

Under Attack in the Time of Trump

We have a terrorism problem in this country, and its name is white supremacy

October 31, 2018 • by Zach Strassburger

There’s an old joke that if there are two Jews, they will build three synagogues: one for one of them to join, one for the other, and one in which neither will step foot. For our queer Jewish family, Tree of Life was the Pittsburgh synagogue that didn’t fit. Of ...

Feature

A (Liberal) World We Have Lost?

What we can learn from Arendt’s insights into an earlier crisis of liberalism

October 31, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Reading Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic in the Age of Trump: A Symposium Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic is not so much a book as a collection, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1972, of three essays and an interview that first appeared, individually, in the years between 1969 and 1971. Three of ...

Feature

Constitutional Courts and the Project of Democratic Defense

Courts should make the defense of democracy a priority

October 30, 2018 • by Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq

In the wake of the Kavanaugh nomination, a debate has erupted on the broadly progressive left about the role of constitutional courts in advancing valuable social ends. Samuel Moyn’s broadside against the “juristocracy,” and Andrew Seal’s response here reflect two potential positions. That debate has been so far focused on the relationship ...

Constitutional Courts and the Project of Democratic Defense

Feature

Hannah Arendt’s Crises, and Ours

The “worldlessness” of our time manifests itself in right-wing populism

October 30, 2018 • by Christian Volk

Reading Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic in the Age of Trump: A Symposium Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic is not so much a book as a collection, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1972, of three essays and an interview that first appeared, individually, in the years between 1969 and 1971. Three of ...

Blue Monday

Why I Won’t Vote for Joe Donnelly

Or the ethical and strategic limits of red-baiting

October 29, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Over the past two years I have written over sixty pieces arguing that Trumpism poses a clear and present danger to liberal democracy; that an effective opposition to Trumpism must involve resistance but also the deepening of democracy; and that given the nature of the US political system, this means ...

Education

BREAKING: DeVos Appointee Says Foreign Spies Are in the Classroom

Programs that refuse to report on international students at government request may face cuts

October 29, 2018 • by Maria Bucur

On Saturday, October 27th, Diane Auer Jones, Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the Department of Education, gave a public address at the conference International Education at the Crossroads, organized in Bloomington by Indiana University. An audience of around 100, many of us migrants and persons of color, and most ...

BREAKING: DeVos Appointee Says Foreign Spies Are in the Classroom

Feature

The Rise of Neo-Conservative Think Tanks in Israel

The brief history of a peculiar context

October 29, 2018 • by Ben Weinberg

It was 2009, and the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS) had a problem. Over the previous two decades Israel’s judiciary had grown increasingly, and to the IZS unacceptably, liberal and activist. Taking note of a number of rulings that had promoted greater formal equality among citizens, the IZS began considering how it might prevent the Israeli Supreme ...

The Rise of Neo-Conservative Think Tanks in Israel

Feature

Welcome the stranger. Defend democracy. And defend ourselves.

Some perhaps surprising initial thoughts about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

October 28, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

First things first. The shootings are despicable and outrageous, and they are both awful in themselves and a symptom of a much deeper and more extensive poison that is being spread throughout the country by Donald Trump and by every politician, whether Republican or Democrat, who in any way draws from ...

Welcome the stranger. Defend democracy. And defend ourselves.

Feature

A Policy U-Turn Steers Toward A New Day For New York’s For-Hire Drivers

New York is the first in the nation to enact legislation upping minimum pay for drivers

October 28, 2018 • by James Parrott

While Manhattan traffic often crawls and stalls, New York City officials have put the pedal to the metal on actions designed to improve pay and working conditions for thousands of for-hire vehicle (FHV) and taxi drivers. In August, New York became the nation’s first city to enact legislation calling for a ...

A Policy U-Turn Steers Toward A New Day For New York’s For-Hire Drivers

Feature

Others

A reflection on sex work

October 28, 2018 • by Amaya Olivas Díaz

On July 31, 2018, the BOE issued a resolution whereby the Ministry of Labor formalized the constitution of the OTRAS union (Sex Workers Organization), under Art. 28 of the EC, which establishes the fundamental right to unionize freely. In line with this news, many voices put the cry in the sky, ...

Feature

The Brazilian Trump?

Bolsonaro’s inflammatory rhetoric leaves the country polarized, its future uncertain

October 27, 2018 • by Marc Hertzman

If Donald Trump’s electoral victory hit some in the U.S. like a runaway truck, Brazilians are experiencing a process that feels more like a slow-moving steamroller crawling gradually but inexorably towards electoral triumph and—it is not hard to imagine—the subsequent crushing of hard-won rights and democratic institutions. The steamroller is Jair ...