On Trump’s Response to Charlottesville

Political Encounters and Ideological Evasions

The recent clashes involving “Unite the Right” protestors and counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia, cost Heather Heyer her life. Her death and President Trump’s response to it have dominated the news of late. To recount the salient events, fighting broke out between “Unite the Right” protestors (a group of white nationalists, white ...
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On Trump’s Response to Charlottesville

A Sign of Resistance; A Symbol of Hope

An Interview with Mateusz Halawa, Head of Social Sciences and Humanities at the School of Form in Poland

As Polish citizens gathered to protest a bill that signals a national shift away from democracy, thousands of them brandished, clung to, wore, and waved  one simple graphic designed by Luka Rayski: a poster saying “Konstytucja”, which means “constitution” in Polish. Colored to emphasize the “ty” (“you”) and “ja” (“me”), ...
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A Sign of Resistance; A Symbol of Hope

Turkey One Year After the Coup Attempt

Erdogan has set up an autocracy

The proclamation of a state of emergency in Turkey on 20 July 2016, four days after the abortive coup there, has paved the way for the general rule of arbitrariness. The government, by violating the limits imposed by the constitution on the jurisdiction of the state of emergency, has since ...
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Turkey One Year After the Coup Attempt

Investigating Normal

Sara Hendren

Is it possible to engineer an inclusive social future? An artist in an engineering school, Sara Hendren's work is driven by questions about human ability in tech-driven cultures. What counts as normal capacity? Which technologies liberate, and which confine? Drawing from disability studies, design research, social practice art, and urban planning, ...
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Investigating Normal

Daniel Ortega

A Visible-Invisible Dictator?

A decade has passed since Daniel Ortega regained the Presidency of Nicaragua. The official discourse, as well as the claim of some opponents, is that this second period is a follow-up of the leftist Sandinista Revolution Ortega took part in thirty years ago, and that the nature of this government ...
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Daniel Ortega

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere III

Truth, Politics and the Bifurcated Sphere of Publics

As I have been reporting on the Wroclaw seminar’s progress, in the shadow of the collapse of democracy in Poland, I have been dumbfounded by events in the U.S. since I got back from Poland. President Trump has threatened nuclear war with North Korea, disregarding all expert opinion about the appropriate ...
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The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere III

On Free Speech

An appeal to leverage the 1st Amendment as it stands

Don’t shut it down. Don’t look to qualify what is meant and protected by the right to free speech by making an exception to the rule for hate speech. Don’t move to make hate speech illegal. Take a step back and let your cooler head prevail. The First Amendment was written to protect minority ...
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On Free Speech

The Courage to Speak Truth in Untruthful Times

Reading Former FBI Director Comey as Parrhesiastes

On June 8th, James Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), gave honest and sincere testimony in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. His testimony concerned President Trump’s handling of the FBI investigation into General Flynn’s relationship to Russian interference in the United States presidential ...
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The Courage to Speak Truth in Untruthful Times

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

The Sphere of Publics and its Bifurcation

As our seminar on authoritarianism and public life progressed, we focused on the work of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, and Joshua Meyrowitz to develop an understanding of mediated public life. Their sociology of media is a sociology of mediated interactions, rather than studies of the media, i.e. major newspapers, ...
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The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

Corporate America Alone Cannot Save Us from Trump

Activists must fight to ensure that all of our institutions are inclusive of all people

Corporate America took a stand against hatred and bigotry this week. On Monday, Merck pharmaceuticals CEO Kenneth Frazier resigned from Donald Trump’s manufacturing council in response to the President’s equivocations about the white-nationalist riot that took place in Charlottesville over the weekend. Even after James Alex Fields, Jr. murdered 32-year ...
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Corporate America Alone Cannot Save Us from Trump

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

Reviewing the work of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt with an assist from Nancy Fraser

It’s been two weeks since my return from Wroclaw. I am getting over the shock of teaching about the rise of the new authoritarianism, as the Polish parliament, The Sejm, seemed to be hammering the final nails into the coffin of Polish democracy. It turned out to be a little ...
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The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I