From the Editors Archives - Page 21 of 171

From the Editors

Hello, Pilgrim

A Public Seminar Thanksgiving

November 27, 2019 • by Claire Potter

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 ...

Announcements

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

A Center for Public Scholarship Public Voices event

November 24, 2019 • by Arien Mack

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 ...

From the Editors

As We Contemplate Change

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

November 20, 2019 • by Claire Potter

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 ...

Activism

They Took Our Footprint Out of the Ground

An Interview with LaDonna Bravebull Allard

November 19, 2019 • by Nick Estes

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 ...

From the Editors

It’s Getting Dark Out There

Thank heaven we all have a laptop and Public Seminar

November 13, 2019 • by Claire Potter

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 ...

From the Editors

It’s Getting Dark Out There

Thank heaven we all have a laptop and Public Seminar

November 13, 2019 • by Claire Potter

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 ...

From the Editors

The View from Europe

And it ain’t good

November 5, 2019 • by Claire Potter

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 ...

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 ...