Feature Archives - Page 7 of 150

Kicking and Screaming: Stonewall at 50

Exiles on 12th Street: Episode Three

June 28, 2019 • by Claire Potter

This is the third episode in Public Seminar’s podcast, Exiles on 12th Street. If you like it, go to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe. The Stonewall riots that took place in New York in June 1969 are widely credited with catalyzing the modern LGBT+ civil rights movement. Join us as ...

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European Parliament Elections Viewed from Central and Eastern Europe

June 19, 2019 • by Veronica Anghel

While the current wave of Euroscepticism and nationalism is a challenge for the European project, this also presents the European Union (EU) with an opportunity for further consolidation: the EU now has clear cut internal “enemies.” More so than an abstract sense of purpose, enemies provide a strong incentive to ...

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Letter Three to Germany: Visiting Chicago Under Trump

In February 2019, Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit observes St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago

June 18, 2019 • by Esther Dischereit

This article was originally published in German in Deutschlandfunk Kultur on April 24, 2019 and has been slightly revised. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Deutschlandfunk Kultur. --- I met Mickey on the Chicago River. “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” said her T-shirt. Her husband, John, a programmer, says that St. ...

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Learning to Hate Shakespeare

What are the implications of being engaged with Shakespeare at the expense of what could otherwise be regarded as a black or African authenticity?

June 17, 2019 • by Jordan Mubako

Looking at Literature syllabi across former British colonies, Shakespeare has persisted to this day. The recent syllabus from the West African Examinations Council (including countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone) has Othello as a compulsory text, with Shakespeare granted equal status as “Non-African Drama” and “African Drama.” Paper 3 of the ...

Education

Public Shakespeare in Public Seminar

Public writing is framed as an alternative to both academic writing and creative projects

June 17, 2019 • by Jeffrey R. Wilson

The assignment, which you’re welcome to use or adapt as you like, starts with students selecting two essays from our Public Shakespeare page. Based on their research topics, they identify three possible venues for their Public Shakespeare essays, reading some recent (non-Shakespearean) essays from these venues to get a feel for public writing. In ...

Blue Monday

How Much Longer Can Pelosi Keep Fiddling While Constitutional Democracy Burns?

What we need now is a Democratic leadership that believes in democracy.

June 17, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

It has been two and a half years since Donald Trump first took his presidential wrecking ball to America’s very flawed system of constitutional democracy. It has been more than two and a half years since the Justice Department -- the FBI, the Special Counsel, lesser federal prosecutors -- first began ...

Education

Accumulation by Education

White Property and Racialized Debt

June 14, 2019 • by Iyko Day

A key loophole that perpetuates both legal and illegal corruption is the outsized role that varsity sports play in the admissions process, widening the path to acceptance for predominantly white athletes in lacrosse, sailing, tennis, crew, water polo, and other “white sports.” Despite the perception that Black students are the face of ...

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Collective Amnesia in Post-Communist Poland

Why history, not memory or mythology, is the path to Polish-Jewish reconciliation

June 14, 2019 • by Magda Teter

After WWII, many European countries engaged in what some scholars dubbed “collective amnesia.” Austria, for example, began to redefine itself as the first victim of the Nazis. France amplified the Resistance, forgetting about its Vichy days; Western Germany, after the trials of several high-profile Nazi leaders, allowed for silence to ...

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How the North American Free Trade Agreement ruined Nourishment

A Review of “Eating NAFTA”

June 13, 2019 • by Alexandra Délano Alonso

Eating NAFTA demonstrates the urgency of responding to a clear and yet mostly invisible health crisis that manifests across borders. It offers tools for rethinking existing approaches to trade and food systems from a transnational, intersectional and structural perspective that shifts the blame that public institutions have placed on individuals (particularly ...

Education

Why Occidental College Revoked a 1929 Honorary Degree to White Supremacist Paul Popenoe

Confronting the legacy of eugenics in the United States and its ties to the founder of modern marriage counseling

June 13, 2019 • by Peter Dreier

In recent years, many colleges and universities have created task forces and programs to excavate their racist histories. These efforts explore their institutions’ financial ties to slavery; the racist views of some founders, faculty, and alumni; their admissions and hiring practices; and their evolving curriculum that, wittingly or unwittingly, reflected society’s white ...

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A Ray of Hope

Romania’s Results in the EU Elections

June 12, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

In the case I know best, Romania, the elections demonstrated a sustained and even rising commitment to the principles of rule of law, the EU as a democratic institution, and trust in the possibility of launching new political parties. It is a case worthy of attention because it offers hope ...

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A Regional Approach for Central American Asylum Seekers

The U.S. should pursue a policy that strengthens ties with neighbors

June 11, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

The White House leaked documents to the Washington Post yesterdaytrying to show that Mexico has in fact agreed to a significant crackdown on its southern border and that Trump remains ready to impose the tariffs, or insist on the safe third country agreement, if the numbers at the U.S. border do not decline ...