Feature Archives - Page 5 of 150

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Financing Medicare for All

A Modest Proposal Toward Democratic unity on Health Care

August 20, 2019 • by Duncan Foley

The proposals of progressives seeking the Democratic nomination for president, such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to establish a universal federally-funded and administered health care system in the United States address real and unresolved policy and political problems. The most fundamental challenge for any health care system is what economists ...

Feature

The New Queer

Aesthetics of the Esoteric Left and Virtual Materialisms

August 19, 2019 • by Luce deLire

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots inspired cultural actors in Berlin and elsewhere to take stock. June 2019 has seen Puqs in Love at Gorki theater, The Present is Not Enough at Hebbel am Ufer Theater (HAU), the Queer Alms conference at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and other events. I used the occasion to investigate contemporary 'Queer ...

Feature

Challenging Plato’s Prejudice Against Imitative Art

An excerpt from ‘Plato and the Moving Image’

August 16, 2019 • by Shai Biderman and Michael Weinman

For all that remains contested concerning the relationship of philosophy and film, and the status of the term "theory" in that regard, one principal result of this is the wide acceptance of a way of thinking about cinematic experience and philosophical practice as much more related than previous thought, such ...

Feature

On Race and Repair

A Güero Reads Plato in Jerusalem

August 15, 2019 • by David Stromberg

I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood with mostly Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan kids, along with a few from Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, and Korea. In some cases, their parents or grandparents had come as migrants to America, where they had been born, and in other cases they had themselves ...

Education

The Reviews Are In

Will Durant’s The Life of Greece

August 14, 2019 • by Lora Burnett

Will Durant’s The Life of Greece, the second volume in the “Story of Civilization” series, was published in 1939, a grim year for “Western Civilization.” Despite -- or perhaps because -- the book was such a popular success, it was reviewed in a handful of academic journals. Two reviews of this volume ...

Feature

Anti-Latino Nativism, Ronald Reagan, and Sound Baths

Past Present Episode 192

August 13, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The mass shooter in El Paso deliberately targeted Latinos who he believed were “invading” Texas. Niki referred to Peter Brimelow’s 1996 book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster. Natalia cited Samuel Huntington’s Foreign Policy essay, “The Hispanic Challenge,” and historian Ruben Donato’s book, The Other ...

Feature

The Dyer’s Hand

Ann Snitow’s retirement from The New School

August 13, 2019 • by Ann Snitow

Ann Snitow gave the following talk on the occasion of her retirement from The New School on April 9, 2019. In their introduction, the two current directors of Gender Studies, Margot Bouman and Lisa Rubin, pointed out that Snitow, now emeritus, had the distinction of having founded the Gender Studies ...

Blue Monday

Putting Trump’s Racism in its Place

One More Reason Why AOC Should Be the Face of the Democratic Party’s Future

August 12, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A naïve reader might read this and imagine that Hewitt’s point is obvious: the contrast between Presidential candidate Kennedy in 1968 and the current President, Donald Trump, in 2019. The contrast is more than obvious. It is glaring. And yet, of course, Hewitt has other purposes in mind. The first is ...

Feature

How Disney has Turned the Film Industry Into a Small World, After All

Does the beloved children’s entertainer have an antitrust problem?

August 12, 2019 • by Jake Pitre

In July 2019, Buzzfeed News ran an article with the headline, “Disney Won. Now What?” It’s a worthwhile question in the aftermath of the company’s purchase of 20th Century Fox from Richard Murdoch. The purchase of Fox is the largest in a long line of high-profile acquisitions by Disney that ...

Feature

On the Death of My Dear Friend, Agnes Heller

“Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas”

August 9, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

Such was Agnes’ principle: she valued her friends and of course her loved ones, but truth was always her highest value. For me, friends have always come first. Hers was the principle of the philosopher, mine that of the political. In philosophy, truth is everything. But in politics nothing is ...

Feature

How Latinos are America’s Greatest Hope for Economic Growth and Renewal

If the nearly 60 million Latinos in the US were a country, they’d be the world’s 7th largest.

August 9, 2019 • by Juan Cole

But as I will demonstrate, in 2019 it is ridiculous to divide Americans by ethnicity. We all need each other to thrive. Without the 40% of the Texas population that are Latinos, the state’s economy would collapse over time. Of course I am making these points because of the gut-wrenching atrocity ...

Exiles on 12th Street

Crime Stories

Exiles on 12th Street, Episode Four

August 8, 2019 • by Claire Potter

A skyrocketing homicide rate, a powerful American Mafia, and a burgeoning drug culture plagued 20th century New York. The high incidence of crime led to sensationalist news coverage and caused less privileged victims’ voices to go unheard. Our fourth episode focuses on crime, telling the stories of Kitty Genovese and ...