When Food Becomes Political

The Netflix series Chef’s table shows why we take cooking seriously

Cooking shows, as a genre, have long fascinated the American public. From the beloved figure of Julia Child cooking French food, to the travel adventures of Anthony Bourdain, the genre is continuously evolving and attracting a growing number of followers vicariously experiencing foreign cuisines and cultures. Netflix’s documentary series, Chef’s Table, is ...
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When Food Becomes Political

Neoliberalism with An Inhuman Face

How Bolsonaro won and how the Left failed in Brazil

The consolidation of the Brazilian extreme right is a recent fact and deserves to be debated in a more analytical fashion. Even though Brazil had significant parts of its society immersed in the tacit defense of the military dictatorship and in actions marked by the absence of any social solidarity ...
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Neoliberalism with An Inhuman Face

The Kinds of Selves We Are

Jill Stauffer’s Ethical Loneliness reveals the injustice of not being heard

Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being acknowledged. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political institutions that, in failing to listen well to survivors, deny them redress by negating their testimony ...
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The Kinds of Selves We Are

LIVE BLOG: Election Day, 2018

Executive Editor Claire Potter rocked an old school blog post throughout the day

This post will be periodically updated throughout Election Day, 2018, and will be featured as Purple Wednesday on November 7 2018. In true old school style, you will have to read this post backwards, as the most recent entries will be at the top. 10:23 p.m. NBC projects that Democrats will take ...
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LIVE BLOG: Election Day, 2018

Omnipotent Leviathan – or Lost in Transition?

Russia’s approach to the past as portrayed in the recent Memorial to the Victims of the Soviet Repressions

A meme surfaced recently in Russia that says, “Today you should believe in the Russian Empire, the USSR, Stalin, Putin, and God, simultaneously.” The politics of identity at play in Russia are indeed illogical. We see former KGB officers and loyal Communist Party members now wholeheartedly praying in an Orthodox ...
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Omnipotent Leviathan – or Lost in Transition?

What Does It Mean to Educate Adults?

The Case of the New School

There is much in question about the future of higher education, but one trend is clear: the average age of undergraduates is rising. As a college degree replaces a high school degree as the basis for more jobs and the possibility of economic stability, more people are starting or returning ...
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What Does It Mean to Educate Adults?

Still Fighting Jim Crow in Georgia

Stacey Abrams is not just battling Brian Kemp, she is battling history

In 1964, Clara Curtis worked as a poll watcher at her local Cobb County, Georgia precinct. She had been working to establish a Republican Party in a state where the Democratic party had a stranglehold on local and state politics. Curtis watched each voter drop a ballot into the wooden ...
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Still Fighting Jim Crow in Georgia

Why Nationalists Insist on the Gender Binary

The attack on transgender people is part of a bigger plan to reverse gender justice

Since 2012 religious groups of many stripes have started to use the term “gender ideology” as a means to polarize the conversation about gender justice, especially in relation to non-binary individuals. What Catholics like the German sociologist Gabriele Kuby want to see is a return to what is “normal” and ...
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Why Nationalists Insist on the Gender Binary

Orban’s Government vs. The Social Sciences

Censoring scientific lectures in Hungary

A public talk that a PhD student, Orsolya Vasarhelyi, and I were scheduled to give on November 8, 2018 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ (HAS) “Hungarian Day of Science” was censored by the Academy’s deputy secretary-general Beáta Mária Barnabás. In English, our talk’s title could be translated as “The ...
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Orban’s Government vs. The Social Sciences

I Was Primed for Sex & Secularism

Reflections on Joan Wallach Scott

When I was young, I wanted to understand how one became secular. At first, I had no word for the change I sought. What I wanted– not so much to know as to do – was leave religion behind. I had been religious. I now was not. Getting there was ...
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I Was Primed for Sex & Secularism

In a Tragedy Always Look for the Helpers

A rabbi rushes to Pittsburgh looking for ways to help and finds that he is one of many 

On Saturday night, my family danced the end of Shabbat away with song. It had been a full Shabbat: celebrating an upcoming marriage, a baby just birthed, welcoming guests, Jews and non-Jews who have never experienced the Jewish day of rest, around our table. Isolated from the outside world, our ...
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In a Tragedy Always Look for the Helpers

Upstaging the Trump Reality Show

How Montana’s socialist ‘Plaid Shirt Guy’ hacked a Trump rally

It isn’t easy to upstage Donald Trump, but Tyler Linfesty -- a 17-year old high school student from Billings, Montana -- managed to divert attention away from the president at a recent Trump rally in his hometown. Linfesty became an immediate internet sensation on September 6 as he stood on the ...
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Upstaging the Trump Reality Show