Feature Archives - Page 94 of 150

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Intellectuals—Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them, Part II

Are intellectuals really the enemies of democracy?

November 24, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

You threaten democracy. They hate you. They suspect that you despise them, as “they cling to their guns and bibles.” They know that you think you are better than they are. When they resent you and act upon their resentment, they too threaten democracy. We recognize that the anti-intellectualism of the less ...

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Monday November 27: Book Launch at The New School, 6 P.M.

Join us live, or for a live tweet, of Federico Finchelstein’s

November 24, 2017 • by The Editors

What is fascism and what is populism? What are their connections in history and theory, and how should we address their significant differences? What does it mean when pundits call Donald Trump a fascist, or label as populist politicians who span left and right such as Hugo Chávez, Juan Perón, ...

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A Public Seminar Thanksgiving

Looking back, looking forward

November 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Claire Potter

In past years we have had some great Thanksgiving posts from Mackenzie Wark, Jeremy Varon and Jeff Goldfarb. Claire Potter, at her old Tenured Radical perch, used to occasionally give out awards to the top ten "turkeys" of the year: for a blast from the blogging past, you can see them here and ...

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Democratic Wins, Twitter, and The Snowy Day

Past Present Episode 107

November 23, 2017 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Niki, and Natalia debate the Democratic wins in the recent off-year elections, the doubling of Twitter’s character limit, and the release of a postage stamp based on Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day.

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Democratic Wins, Twitter, and The Snowy Day

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The Death of Homo Economicus

A review of Peter Fleming’s latest book

November 22, 2017 • by Vince Carducci

Fleming takes up the metaphor of the tsunami to describe the 2008-2009 financial crisis and its aftermath. The tsunami metaphor has been invoked, particularly in the media, Fleming notes, as a way to frame discussions of the economic devastation and subsequent austerity that the crash has wrought on economies around the world. ...

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Can A Republican Have Progressive Values?

Bob Holden, New York City Councilman from Queens, says yes

November 22, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Again, what's not to love? Well, since you asked... Mayor de Blasio, who won an overpowering mandate for a second term, does not love him. Last fall, Holden -- a lifetime registered Democrat -- primaried Elizabeth Crowley, a cousin of Queens Democratic powerbroker Joseph Crowley, and lost. Fair enough. But then ...

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After Hurricane Maria

Puerto Ricans Find Refuge in a Central Massachusetts City

November 21, 2017 • by Amaris Castillo

Krysthina Ortiz refused to get up from a chair outside her school’s main office. Tears streamed down the 9-year-old’s face as she looked up at her mother, Krysthia Gauthier. “No quiero ir (I don’t want to go)! No quiero ir!” the girl cried. Gauthier leaned forward and wiped her daughter’s face with her ...

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Queers, Zombies, and Institutions

A Review of Lorenzo Bernini’s Queer Apocalypses: Elements of Antisocial Theory

November 21, 2017 • by Aaron Neber

Edelman’s words, published in 2004, may seem an already antiquated sentiment: (many) queers can now marry and fight in American wars; the Pope has ordered Christians to atone for the marginalization of LGBT people; and queer theory is fully lodged in American academia, making its charge for revolution resound less ...

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The Return of the “Forgotten Man”

Refurbishing symbols of the Gilded Age

November 20, 2017 • by Luke Philip Plotica

Yet there is another sense in which we, in America, have been treading upon well-worn ground. Though many called the campaign and outcome of the 2016 election unprecedented, its roots lie, at least partly, in economic and social conditions which are by no means new. In his 2014 book, Capital ...

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How to Stop the Bleeding at New York’s Public Hospitals

Caring for the neediest and most vulnerable should be more equitably distributed

November 20, 2017 • by Barbara Caress and James Parrott

Serving more than one million New Yorkers a year, the hospitals and clinics of the New York City Health + Hospitals (NYCH+H) system play a key role in combatting illness and injury across the city. But fiscally, they’re in dire health themselves; in fact, they’re hemorrhaging money. The system’s operating ...

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A Woman’s Work

A Library of One’s Own

November 18, 2017 • by Sara Georgini

Read the news with a suffragist of 1913. Women’s rights advocates scanning the society page of the Atlanta Constitution on the morning of 4 June had a bevy of personas to peruse. There was the “Woman Shopper” gliding through a downy Eden of department stores: “Your presence, your influence and the wholesome atmosphere that ...

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Intellectuals—Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them, Part I

Re-considering the democratic roles of the intellectual as revealed this week in Public Seminar

November 17, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Intellectuals have the knowledge and the experience required for people themselves to govern well. I am thinking of this today as I read the news and as I think about our work here at Public Seminar, drawing on my own long investigation of the sociology of intellectuals. My work on intellectuals ...