#MeToo and the Massage Envy Scandal

Looking Back and Beyond

Nearly thirty years later, Massage Envy, the largest massage franchise in the world, has been hit with 180 charges of sexual assault and prosecuting attorney Adam Horovitz sounded a similar note: “An inordinate amount of people are attracted to massage therapy because of sexual interest … there’s opportunity in the ...
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From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond

At first sight, today’s crisis appears to be political. Its most spectacular expression is right here, in the United States: Donald Trump -- his election, his presidency, and the contention surrounding it. But there is no shortage of analogues elsewhere: the UK’s Brexit debacle; the waning legitimacy of the European ...
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To a Revolutionary Degree

Power to the PhDs

The catastrophic state of early career employment in faculty roles for PhDs is nothing less than a moral issue that must be addressed with some major changes that we, as PhDs, must work to effect. These changes must prepare PhDs for work broadly conceived, rather than hewing to the current ...
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The Politics of Sex at Universities

Cases can be closed by firing faculty, but conversations shouldn’t be

In the past several years, the wave of sexual harassment revelations that have hit educational, along with media, corporate, political, and athletic, institutions has claimed our attention over and over. Readers of Public Seminar know that the New School has not been exempt from the spotlight trained on private behavior that has ...
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When Title IX Hits Home

Addressing Our Troubles

As I see it, there are two dimensions of the problem and they should be separated. First, as it is clear now, problems of harassment, as well as apparently improper intimate relationships have existed at the New School as well as other institutions of higher learning. How bad the problems ...
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Offshoring

Reassessing the Rhetoric of Ineluctability

Such rhetoric explains the increased use of offshoring since the 1990s — and the changes in employment that it has engendered — by referencing the changing economic environment. One decisive change that is almost always mentioned when this is discussed is the increased integration of markets around the world: markets ...
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Podemos or the Rise of Progressive Patriotism in Spain

An Interview with Íñigo Errejón

Muñoz: Íñigo let me begin by thanking you for taking this time to speak with me about the current state of Podemos for a North American audience. Podemos is a relatively young political organization that emerged in 2014. In a matter of months, it became the second most powerful political force ...
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Russian Absurd

A glimpse into the notebooks of the modernist avant-garde artist Daniil Kharms translated from the Russian by Alex Cigale

From the Letters (1933) Monday October 16, 1933. Petersburg. Talent grows, destroying, building. The sign of stagnation is well-being. Dear Klavdia Vasilevna, You are a remarkable and genuine person! As much as it grieves me not to be able to see you, I won’t be inviting you to the Children’s Theater or to come to my city. How heartwarming ...
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Utopoly

A utopian design game

Since Hayek’s Road to Serfdom managed to conflate planning with totalitarianism, the use of design in utopian discourse can cause concern in some quarters, suggesting a master-plan or blueprint model. However, Hayek’s concern was with the failure of planning rather than its success. The irony was that a key component of capitalist ...
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Coping After The Election

Trump year 1

Right after the election, I biked, blogged, and smoked a lot of grass. When I began coughing, I cut out the marijuana. I then joined Jen Hoffman’s Americans of Conscience Action Committee, which sends weekly emails with suggestions of what to do, from demonstrations to phone calls to letters and ...
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How I Survived 2017

Trump year 1

On November 9, at two in the morning, I turned on the computer and saw that Clinton had lost the election. My whole body shook for hours, unlike anything I had ever experienced. In the following three days, I expressed my rage on Facebook and ultimately was unfriended by someone ...
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Terrorism and Talk

Everyday Life and Public Seminar after the Explosion Under the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the Election of Doug Jones and “Tax Reform”

I sat down to breakfast with Naomi, my wife: she reading the paper, we listening to the news bulletins. They were still vague. It was not known yet what the cause of the explosion was. At one point, the news announcer slipped and called the incident an attack, but then ...
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