Why I Won’t Vote for Joe Donnelly

Or the ethical and strategic limits of red-baiting

Over the past two years I have written over sixty pieces arguing that Trumpism poses a clear and present danger to liberal democracy; that an effective opposition to Trumpism must involve resistance but also the deepening of democracy; and that given the nature of the US political system, this means ...
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Why I Won’t Vote for Joe Donnelly

BREAKING: DeVos Appointee Says Foreign Spies Are in the Classroom

Programs that refuse to report on international students at government request may face cuts

On Saturday, October 27th, Diane Auer Jones, Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the Department of Education, gave a public address at the conference International Education at the Crossroads, organized in Bloomington by Indiana University. An audience of around 100, many of us migrants and persons of color, and most ...
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BREAKING: DeVos Appointee Says Foreign Spies Are in the Classroom

The Rise of Neo-Conservative Think Tanks in Israel

The brief history of a peculiar context

It was 2009, and the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS) had a problem. Over the previous two decades Israel’s judiciary had grown increasingly, and to the IZS unacceptably, liberal and activist. Taking note of a number of rulings that had promoted greater formal equality among citizens, the IZS began considering how it might prevent the Israeli Supreme ...
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The Rise of Neo-Conservative Think Tanks in Israel

Welcome the stranger. Defend democracy. And defend ourselves.

Some perhaps surprising initial thoughts about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

First things first. The shootings are despicable and outrageous, and they are both awful in themselves and a symptom of a much deeper and more extensive poison that is being spread throughout the country by Donald Trump and by every politician, whether Republican or Democrat, who in any way draws from ...
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Welcome the stranger. Defend democracy. And defend ourselves.

A Policy U-Turn Steers Toward A New Day For New York’s For-Hire Drivers

New York is the first in the nation to enact legislation upping minimum pay for drivers

While Manhattan traffic often crawls and stalls, New York City officials have put the pedal to the metal on actions designed to improve pay and working conditions for thousands of for-hire vehicle (FHV) and taxi drivers. In August, New York became the nation’s first city to enact legislation calling for a ...
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A Policy U-Turn Steers Toward A New Day For New York’s For-Hire Drivers

Others

A reflection on sex work

On July 31, 2018, the BOE issued a resolution whereby the Ministry of Labor formalized the constitution of the OTRAS union (Sex Workers Organization), under Art. 28 of the EC, which establishes the fundamental right to unionize freely. In line with this news, many voices put the cry in the sky, ...
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Others

The Brazilian Trump?

Bolsonaro’s inflammatory rhetoric leaves the country polarized, its future uncertain

If Donald Trump’s electoral victory hit some in the U.S. like a runaway truck, Brazilians are experiencing a process that feels more like a slow-moving steamroller crawling gradually but inexorably towards electoral triumph and—it is not hard to imagine—the subsequent crushing of hard-won rights and democratic institutions. The steamroller is Jair ...
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The Brazilian Trump?

The Democrats’ Dilemma

Looking ahead to 2020

Although the crucial mid-term elections are a mere two weeks away, it never takes long before most political conversations turn to the question of the 2020 Democratic nominee. So while the outcome of 2018’s contests is still very much up in the air, let’s focus on an election still two ...
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The Democrats’ Dilemma

The Gray Beauty of Christine Hallquist

Transgender, the non-binary and the Radical Center

Last Friday, I came across an intriguing profile of a particularly attractive woman, Christine Hallquist, the transgender Democratic Party candidate for Governor of the state of Vermont. She is running behind in the polls. Nonetheless, how she is running, as well as who she is, I find luminous. “My whole life has been ...
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The Gray Beauty of Christine Hallquist

This Fight Would Take Place Someday

An impassioned appeal for resoluteness in the face of right wing reaction

This text is for those who weep for what is about to come. It was written for those who perceive the darkest of nights arriving with its violence, its scorn and its appetite for vengeance. Because in these moments only two alternatives seem possible: escape and melancholy. We know the ...
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This Fight Would Take Place Someday

How Does Animation Change our Concept of Life and What Kind of Ethics Does it Require?

A Conversation with Media Historian and Theorist Deborah Levitt

Public Seminar (PS): Deborah, in your recently published book The Animatic Apparatus. Animation, Vitality, and the Futures of the Image you claim that animation is the dominant medium of our time and propose the concept of the animatic apparatus as a dispositif, that is, as a kind of organizing mechanics for contemporary culture. Can ...
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How Does Animation Change our Concept of Life and What Kind of Ethics Does it Require?

What is the Crisis a Crisis of?

To characterize our republic’s predicament as one of democracy is an authoritarian fantasy

Reading Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic in the Age of Trump: A Symposium Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic is not so much a book as a collection, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1972, of three essays and an interview that first appeared, individually, in the years between 1969 and 1971. Three of ...
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What is the Crisis a Crisis of?