Feature Archives - Page 68 of 150

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Michigan Claims English as Official Language

The Forgotten and Ignored History of U.S. Support for Official Translations

April 26, 2018 • by Rosina Lozano

On February 22 Michigan's house “with no warning” voted in favor of House Bill 4053, which would make English the state’s official language for all public records and public meetings. Republican representative Aaron Miller called it a “great day” and did not see the bill as exclusionary: “We’re not turning ...

Michigan Claims English as Official Language

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Sex and Secularism

An excerpt from Joan Wallach Scott’s latest book

April 26, 2018 • by Joan Wallach Scott

An interview between Judith Butler and Joan Wallach Scott can be found here. As I have studied it here, secularism is not an objective description of institutions and policies but rather a polemical term whose meanings change in the different contexts in which it is deployed. In this book I have ...

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For Conservatives, It’s Stormy Weather

Is the GOP dividing over Trump’s scandalous personal life?

April 25, 2018 • by Claire Potter

Why are so many Christian conservatives refusing to criticize Donald Trump's pay to play sex life? The news of a $130,000 settlement made to porn star Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, via alleged fixer Michael Cohen, is only the latest episode in which conservative religious leaders and the voters they ...

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The Racism of Climate Denial

Creating uncertainty about evidence is an injustice

April 24, 2018 • by Genevieve Guenther

Climate justice demands we acknowledge that the fossil-fuel economy distributes its costs unequally across racial lines. For example, race, not poverty, is correlated with exposure to PM 2.5, a health-damaging particle produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Climate change itself, the planetary effect of fossil-fuel consumption, also affects people unequally ...

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Barbara Bush, Starbucks, and the U.S. Census

Past Present Episode 127

April 24, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate the life and legacy of Barbara Bush, Starbucks’ race problem, and the U.S. Census.

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Barbara Bush, Starbucks, and the U.S. Census

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The Demonization of Ethel Rosenberg

An excerpt from Trans-generational Trauma and the Other

April 24, 2018 • by Adrienne Harris

The Demonization of Ethel Rosenberg, by Adrienne Harris, appears in Trans-generational Trauma and the Other, a volume of essays published in 2017 psychoanalytically meditating on the question of the transgenerational transmission of trauma, metastasizing and alienated historical ghosts, and the inter-subjectivity of Big History. Public Seminar spoke with Dr Harris – who is, among many ...

Blue Monday

Between Past and Future

Thinking about life and death

April 23, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington I attended an interesting talk yesterday. Being a young scholar, the speaker was (of course) using PowerPoint. At one moment in the talk he referenced a “recent argument” that he would engage. As he did ...

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Trump’s Bottling of Old Wine

Can we finally lose our bipartisan taste for workfare?

April 23, 2018 • by John Krinsky

It is tempting to see President Trump’s executive order directing his agencies to find ways to require work as a condition for receiving means-tested benefits as another example of his outsized callousness. By casting all means-tested aid programs as “welfare,” Trump’s executive order supersizes “workfare” by linking benefits to work. There are ...

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Was Homosexuality Illegal in Communist Europe?

The complex sexual geopolitics of the Eastern bloc

April 22, 2018 • by Lukasz Szulc

Communism tends to be equated with homophobia. It is often imagined as a backward force, putting on hold economic, political and social advancements, including the adoption of LGBT rights and the development of LGBT activism. As Dennis Altman wrote in 1971: “prejudice against homosexuality as ‘a bourgeois degeneracy’ became strongly imbued in Communist ...

Was Homosexuality Illegal in Communist Europe?

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The Art of [Breaking] the Deal

Trump Administration to roll back national auto efficiency and emissions standards

April 21, 2018 • by John Lawrence

The Trump Administration’s decision to roll back national auto efficiency and emissions standards and challenge California’s right to set tougher criteria will not only make Americans sicker and increase dependency on foreign oil. Trump’s unilateral action will violate an understanding that taxpayers would not finance the revitalization of a non-competitive ...

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Dark Times, Cultural Freedom and (the) Media

Reflections on The Inauguration of The Center for Media at Risk

April 20, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am now at the inauguration of the Center for Media at Risk at Annenberg School of Communication in Philadelphia. The opening ceremonies have been completed. The presentations and discussions begin later this morning. I see from the program a broad set of concerns, with special sessions on the Digital, ...

Dark Times, Cultural Freedom and (the) Media

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Charity Workers, Organize!

A guide for the overworked and underappreciated

April 20, 2018 • by Simon Jones

If you work in a charity, chances are you are not in a union. Which is unfortunate, because you will almost certainly have seen things a union can fix: low morale, poor conditions and pay, infringements of labor rights, discrimination, poor or malicious management, and work-related illness. This is a guide ...