From the Editors Archives - Page 151 of 171

Feature

Why Did Trump Win?

A Proposal for Modesty

November 12, 2016 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Why did Trump win? I begin with a question. Because it is a question being asked by so many people, ordinary citizens (and “undocumented” resident non-citizens) and intellectuals, writers, and academics. And because it is and will long remain a question, one with no simple answer. Election day was only a ...

Feature

America the Troubled

Notes on the Political Landscape of a Divided Nation

November 12, 2016 • by Zachary Sunderman

I. In 2008, I stepped outside upon hearing the news that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States. I needed a moment to be able to look at the sky, to see, enveloping me, a New America. We had turned our backs decisively on the abuses of the ...

Feature

What to Do After the Election?

Moving Forward Under a Trump Presidency

November 11, 2016 • by Chris Crews

The weather in New York on the morning of November 9th was gloomy, just like the political mood. Despite numerous reassurances to the contrary, many people’s worst nightmare had just come true. Donald Trump would soon be President. It was as if the entire world had somehow come unraveled overnight. ...

Feature

Borders and the Politics of Mourning

Social Research: An International Quarterly (Summer 2016)

November 11, 2016 • by Douglas de Toledo Piza

The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility (ZIMM) is honored to host the launch event of “Borders and the Politics of Mourning” a special issue published by Social Research: An International Quarterly (Summer 2016), with a keynote address by Judith Butler. With more than 15,000 migrants dead and disappeared since 2014, ...

Feature

American Fascism

The Presidency of Donald J. Trump

November 10, 2016 • by Matthew Filner

The United States did the unthinkable on November 8th: we elected a fascist. No, I don’t mean we elected a Nazi or any leader from the 1930s in Europe or Asia. But we also didn’t elect a neo-fascist, or a proto-fascist. Those caveats diminish the fascism that we face: Trump’s ...

Feature

The Day After

November 9, 2016 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I didn’t sleep much last night. I think it was near 4 am when I was finally able to shut off the lights after watching Trump’s victory speech. Perhaps I slept fitfully for a few hours. I don’t know. My mind raced through so many scenarios, so many questions. And ...

Feature

The Mo(u)rning After

Finding Words for Political Disaster

November 9, 2016 • by Claire Potter

Waking up in a state of mourning after Donald Trump's horrifying victory in yesterday's presidential election has caused me to take refuge in one of my favorite childhood movies. The Poseidon Adventure was released in 1972, as political life in the United States was turning from explosion to implosion. This cheesy ...

Feature

Can You Text Your Way to Mental Health?

A New Approach to Therapy Raises Concerns Among Professionals

November 9, 2016 • by J.D. Finkelstein

Visiting the website for a popular app which advertises confidential, anonymous, 24/7 text psychotherapy, I was struck by how similar it looked to those adult chatrooms which advertise “hot singles in your area are waiting to talk to you now.” Replace the words “hot singles” with “licensed therapists” and you ...

Education

Utopian Niche-ings and the Politics of If and Otherwise

November 8, 2016 • by Abou Farman

Despite the radical role of utopian thinking in early revolutionary and social change movements in Europe, by the latter half of the 20th century utopian projects had been largely discredited as idealistic and unrealizable or as preludes to an inevitable dystopia. But there has been a revival of utopia talk ...

Utopian Niche-ings and the Politics of If and Otherwise

Feature

Never Tell Me The Odds

Learning from the Powerball Experiment

November 7, 2016 • by J.D. Finkelstein

In the beginning of 2016, the world saw what was perhaps the largest social psychological experiment of all time. It involved more than 635,000,000 participants and was conducted across 44 states, as well as Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and Washington, DC, and its results gave researchers an astonishing ...

Feature

Why Vote for Clinton If You Don’t Believe in Her?

A pragmatic defense of the Democratic Party in 2016

November 6, 2016 • by Zachary Sunderman

The following was a message I wrote to my friends on the morning of November 6, 2016. Jeffrey Goldfarb recommended that it be published at Public Seminar. I have revised it slightly for this version, but it remains an informal piece. ZVS With a few days left before the end of this election, ...

Why Vote for Clinton If You Don’t Believe in Her?

Feature

New Catastrophe in Turkey

An open letter from Zeynep Gambetti

November 6, 2016 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Nancy Fraser just sent me this important open letter from Zeynep Gambetti on the escalating crisis in Turkey. J.G Dear friends and colleagues, We are going through very, very hard times all over the world. The rate of catastrophe is perhaps higher in Turkey, due to the State of Emergency that accelerates ...