From the Editors Archives - Page 20 of 169

From the Editors

Our Contemporary Political Landscape

October 30, 2019 • by Claire Potter

This week we begin thinking about the present by contemplating about the past: senior editor Alex Aleinikoff looks to Auschwitz to understand why the Trump Administration deliberately inflicts suffering on migrants to the United States. “I will not enter into the discussion of whether the detention facilities to which children ...

Democracy

The Theater of Impeachment

An interview with Brenda Wineapple

October 29, 2019 • by Charlotte Slivka

BW: That’s a lot of questions! I had to have a sense of what the story was in order for the narrative could take shape. The entire book took six years to research and to write, but the story came to me after about two years into the research. In other ...

From the Editors

It’s Impeachment Season

October 23, 2019 • by Claire Potter

But we are all one country, aren't we? Because everywhere in the United States it’s impeachment season. Half the time at Public Seminar, we’ll believe it when we see it, but as of today, it looks like Donald Trump is finally on the ropes and taking a beating. Click here to ...

From the Editors

A Penny for Your Thoughts

On capitalism, the nation and war

October 15, 2019 • by Claire Potter

Our second pressing issue is nationalism – but with a twist. Reviving a roundtable discussion from last spring about Jill Lepore’s majestic survey of United States history, These Truths (2019), we ask: what is “the nation”? How do we study it – and who is included? Why do popular histories of ...

From the Editors

Read Slowly – If You Can

October 9, 2019 • by Claire Potter

We want you to come back to our new platform over and over again during the week, to savor the articles we have chosen for you, articles organized as a conversation about pressing issues. Go ahead: bookmark us on your device and your laptop. Now, every time you find yourself ...

Feature

Welcome to the New Public Seminar

Marking the New School’s centennial year with a refreshed platform and a renewed commitment to conversation

September 30, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, James Miller and Claire Potter

Everything you have always found at Public Seminar is still here. But we’ve redesigned the site to let you let you slow down, if you want to. Public Seminar’s commitment to discussing the pressing issues of our contemporary world also now includes a commitment to contemplation, to doing more with less, and at the ...

Feature

Trump Is America’s Father, and Dad is Sick

America’s Toxic Parent

September 30, 2019 • by Susanna Lee

The parent-child analogy does not presume that the state leader acts as parent, but that the state itself does. There has always been some overlap between state and individual when it comes to acting as parent to the people. Many heads of state are described in fatherly terms. It is ...

Feature

A Ticket for the Rome Express

A Strategy for Democracy

September 27, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

In Budapest, and shortly before local elections, some of my friends now speak of the Istanbul Express. As readers know, in that enormous city, followers of the slightly left Republican People’s Party (CHP), of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a small nationalist grouping, “the Good Party,” united to ...

Feature

On Hate and Boycotts

How We Choose What We Believe

September 26, 2019 • by David Stromberg

It took me about six months to start interacting with people I perceived as "white." It took me a lot longer to reflect on how I could so readily use the word hate. With time I realized it was because, where I came from, hating white people -- which mostly meant ...

Feature

On Postcolonial Remembering and Democratic Openings in Taiwan

An Interview with Former Political Prisoner, Fred Chin

September 26, 2019 • by Stephen J. Hartnett and Patrick Shaou-Whea Dodge

Beginning with the infamous “228” massacres in the Spring of 1947, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) brutalized Taiwan with murder, torture, mass imprisonment, and relentless censorship -- this period has come to be known as the “White Terror.” The brave work of generations of activists led to the KMT finally lifting ...

Feature

Socialist Humanism

Integrating Psychology into a New Progressive Politics

September 26, 2019 • by Mick Cooper

The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics is, perhaps, one of the most inspiring and forward-thinking texts to come out of UK progressive politics for several years. Edited by a Green MP (Caroline Lucas), a Labour MP (Lisa Nandy), and a Liberal Democrat candidate (Chris Bowers), the book lays out a ...

Feature

Death by Omission

Power and Politics in the Amazon

September 25, 2019 • by Chris Crews

Celebrity Distractions Shellenberger begins by attacking public celebrities who shared photos that were either not from the Amazon or actually dated back to years earlier: “Celebrities, environmentalists, and political leaders blame Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for destroying the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, which they say is the “lungs of the world.” Singers and ...