The Things We Promise

Happy New Year from Public Seminar

Public Seminar looks different than it did in 2016, a new platform and publishing style that allows us to create a new reading experience for you. For New Year’s, we are launching a new kind of feature: three essays that take on a controversial article and slow the conversation down to a pace that ...
Read More
The Things We Promise

Our Gift for You

Greetings of the season from all of us to all of you

But here’s a real gift for you, from real people: this week’s issue of Public Seminar which, according to our tradition, is just as secular – and just as free -- as it is the rest of the year.  This week we begin with a recap of impeachment doings by senior editor Jeffrey Isaac ...
Read More
Our Gift for You

We Are Getting Texts from Donald Trump

And we fantasize about writing back

We admit that we have neglected the President, and we will continue to do so – despite Melania's BEAUTIFUL photos. But if we were to text the President back, it would be with the good news that Public Seminar has, once again, curated a weekly issue that encourages him to ...
Read More
We Are Getting Texts from Donald Trump

Looking Uptown

Public Seminar reports from the center of the world

In Democracy, senior editor Maria Bucur offers us a two-part reflection on Romania where, she argues, the 2019 presidential elections signal a populism in retreat. In her second essay, however, Bucur points to an underlying corruption that has become harder to fight since the Trump administration, as part of the campaign against Democratic presidential candidate ...
Read More
Looking Uptown

If It’s Wednesday….

It must be Public Seminar

It’s exhausting, isn’t it? But here comes Public Seminar, which is free (although donations are welcome -- phone lines are open!) and it always will be free. And have we got great issue for you this week. We are starting off another cluster on Democracy with a report from Laszlo Bruszt on the ...
Read More

Hello, Pilgrim

A Public Seminar Thanksgiving

It has been 398 years since the first Thanksgiving in the New World: held in October, it occurred after the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony completed their harvest. Fifty-three English people and 90 Wampanoags indigenous to the region partied for three days. Unlike other English colonies in Virginia, where ...
Read More

The Pros and Cons of U.S. Universities Operating Campuses in Countries with Authoritarian Regimes

A Center for Public Scholarship Public Voices event

 What are the goals these offshore US campuses and centers in such countries aim to achieve? Can they be achieved? Must the curricula in the courses taught be altered to comply with the limits on free inquiry either implicitly or explicitly imposed?  If US students attend these campuses ,are they free to travel and talk ...
Read More

As We Contemplate Change

We look at what’s possible, who makes it possible, and how people move policy

So let’s start with how change happens. Economist James K. Galbraith leads off our politics section this week with an analysis of Bernie Sanders’ economic platform: can Bernie do all these things? Read it and find out. Next, we turn to a reflection on activism, as Nick Estes interviews Native American ...
Read More

They Took Our Footprint Out of the Ground

An Interview with LaDonna Bravebull Allard

This interview was conducted on January 10, 2018. --- Nick Estes: I’m here today with LaDonna Bravebull Allard, who helped found Sacred Stone Camp in April 2016. Can you introduce yourself? LaDonna Bravebull Allard: My name is LaDonna Bravebull Allard. My real name is Tamakawastewin, or “Her Good Earth Woman.” I’m an enrolled ...
Read More

It’s Getting Dark Out There

Thank heaven we all have a laptop and Public Seminar

We are also interested in technology this month, with a terrific essay about digital infrastructure and smart factories from Birgit Mahnkopf: to read the second part of this essay, you’ll have to head over to our new friends at Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, a German web magazine in the Eurozine network. Look out ...
Read More

It’s Getting Dark Out There

Thank heaven we all have a laptop and Public Seminar

We are also interested in technology this month, with a terrific essay about digital infrastructure and smart factories from Birgit Mahnkopf: to read the second part of this essay, you’ll have to head over to our new friends at Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, a German web magazine in the Eurozine network. Look out ...
Read More

The View from Europe

And it ain’t good

It’s refreshing to spend time in a place where everyone isn’t obsessed with the Occupant of the White House, but it’s also now strange to be in Berlin, a place where the United States was once so relevant -- and is now so irrelevant. A colleague from Croatia told me kindly that America ...
Read More