From the Editors Archives - Page 139 of 171

Feature

Fly the Angry Skies

Airline Travel and the Militarization of Everyday Spaces

April 14, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Yes, he was threatening me with detention and a strip search. What had I done? I hadn't lost my temper. Not yet, at any rate. I hadn't even sighed or rolled my eyes. I had, however, explained that I was late for my flight and needed to be searched and released ...

Feature

Three Futures for the Democratic Party

The Party Beyond Hillary and Bernie

April 13, 2017 • by Macabe Keliher

The electoral defeat of the Democratic Party last November, coupled with a lackluster resistance to Trump and the Republican agenda, has exposed a political party long in decay. Having lost nearly one thousand seats in local and national elections over the past eight years, and then the presidency, the Democratic ...

Feature

Get Out & The Horror of White Pleasure

An Examination of Jordan Peele’s 2017 Film

April 12, 2017 • by Ella Myers

The terrific film Get Out -- which writer and director Jordan Peele aptly dubs a “social thriller” -- is a smash hit and critics’ favorite. Many glowing reviews converge on a key claim: the film is a gripping exposé of “white liberal hypocrisy.” And it is. But it is also, and ...

Education

White Supremacy, Elitism, and the Future of Liberal Education

A response to Tim Lacy’s ‘Great Books Socialism’

April 12, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In his extended essay, “Great Books Socialism?,” recently published on Public Seminar, Tim Lacy makes a compelling case for adapting the practice -- suggested by Molly Worthen in an Op-ed for the New York Times -- of deploying the great books as ideological tools established by conservative foundations and institutes ...

White Supremacy, Elitism, and the Future of Liberal Education

Feature

Seeing Rikers, Closing Rikers

Making Incarceration Visible

April 11, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

A year ago the New School hosted the opening of States of Incarceration, an exhibition created by hundreds of students and people directly affected by incarceration. Organized through the Humanities Action Lab, a consortium of 20 universities, the exhibition details the history of imprisonment in the U.S by a close ...

Feature

Anthony Wayne, Distributed Sovereignty, and the Bodies of the Republic

From the early modern to the contemporary USA, part 1

April 10, 2017 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

Is Wayne -- from his uncouthness to his ruthlessness to his success -- useful to think with today? There are certainly ways he haunts our present. Historians, for example, have often seen him as a forbearer of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policies. And as such he connects, via a recent, ...

Anthony Wayne, Distributed Sovereignty, and the Bodies of the Republic

Democracy

Aristotelian Reflections on President Trump’s Unauthorized Missile Strikes in Syria

The opposite of cowardice is rashness, and courage the mean between

April 8, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

Earlier in the same work, while concluding his general discussion of virtue and vice, Aristotle refers to the famous story of Odysseus facing the original “rock and a hard place” dilemma. Odysseus knows that he has no choice but to pass through the middle of the whirlpool and a ferocious ...

Aristotelian Reflections on President Trump’s Unauthorized Missile Strikes in Syria

Feature

What Do You Mean When You Use the Term Neoliberalism?

A Question to My American Friends, Colleagues, Students and Comrades on the Academic Left

April 7, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The term “neoliberalism” drives me crazy, specifically when used in the U.S.. It explains too much with too little, concealing crucial distinctions, as it frustrates crucial coalitions against the clear and present danger of the new authoritarianism of Trump, Le Pen, Orban, Kaczynski, et al.. Further, it’s meaningless for much ...

What Do You Mean When You Use the Term Neoliberalism?

Feature

Great Books Socialism?

Intellectual Traditions Matter for Movement Building and Identity Formation

April 6, 2017 • by Tim Lacy

Late in 2016, Molly Worthen lauded the great books idea as an antidote to liberalism’s ills in the Age of Trump. In “Can I Go to Great Books Camp?” Worthen notes that studying the history of ideas is always connected to great books. One assumption of Worthen’s, which I endorse, ...

Feature

Provoking Informed Discussion By Any Means Necessary

No new posts on Tuesday and Wednesday

April 4, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We, the editors and staff of Public Seminar, are working hard all the time to cultivate an offering of posts that “provoke critical and informed discussion by any means necessary,” responding to the pressing problems of our times and address enduring problems of the human condition, as we put it ...

Provoking Informed Discussion By Any Means Necessary

Education

Hungarian Higher Education Under Attack

The Fate of CEU is the Fate of Freedom

April 3, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Central European University, one of the most important institutions of higher education in Europe, is currently being threatened by the Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist-populist FIDESZ party. CEU, founded in 1991 during the early phases of the post-Communist transition, is officially registered and accredited in ...

Feature

Prophets of Deceit

Post-Truth Politics and the Future of the Left

April 3, 2017 • by Nicholas Baer and Maggie Hennefeld

–Reinhart Koselleck Hindsight, much like the year we’re all now desperately looking forward to, is 20/20. –John Oliver The spectacular and traumatic failure of established news sources and polls to predict the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election has not only heightened a pervasive sense of uncertainty and anxiety, but also given rise ...