The Majority Finds Its School

The lessons of Gerda Lerner

In the fall of 1962, Gerda Lerner offered a pioneering course in women’s history at the New School, titled “Great Women in American History.” Such a course may have occurred at Radcliffe College in the 1930s, and perhaps at other women’s colleges, but Lerner’s course at the New School was ...
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The Majority Finds Its School

Kavanaugh Protests Continue to the End

‘Sexual Predators on the Court, Hell no, We Don’t Support’

Protests against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to become a Justice of the Supreme Court resumed on Thursday, October 4, and continued through Saturday, October 6 when he was officially sworn in. While the protesters were still mostly women, more younger women came than in September, dropping the average age of the protesters ...
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Kavanaugh Protests Continue to the End

Exiled Knowledge Salvaged for World Use

The histories hidden in the New School’s digital archives

The histories of an iconoclastic institution aren’t easy to trace. The New School has always been diffuse, porous and underfunded. Until recently, The New School didn’t even have an archive. So the fifty-seven volumes of publicity scrapbooks maintained by a clipping service for the school’s first several decades -- and ...
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Exiled Knowledge Salvaged for World Use

One Year after Las Vegas

Where does the gun control debate stand?

Within a period of about ten minutes, 64-year old Stephen Paddock, positioned from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, fired 1,100 rounds of ammunition into an open crowd one year ago last week. The deadliest of its kind to date, the incident took the lives ...
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One Year after Las Vegas

Space Race Remixed

The mythical war between capitalisms

For centuries we have tried to unravel the mysteries of the universe and images have been vital to that unravelling. At different points in history the moon has been held responsible for insanity, fertility, and even home to alien life. But mostly, these celestial bodies have remained a mere twinkling in ...
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Space Race Remixed

The Legitimacy of the Supreme Court?

The system is working and that is the problem

We Americans are “constitutional fetishists” in the apt phrase of the lesser-known mid-20th century critical theorist of law and economy, Franz Neumann. We tend to think that a particular order of state institutions -- for example, our current incarnation of the separation-of-powers -- embodies the essence of democracy instead of looking ...
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The Legitimacy of the Supreme Court?

Better Jobs, Cleaner Air, Safer Streets

How To Revamp Commercial Waste Pickup

New York City is poised to launch a major reform of its sprawling commercial waste system, in which dozens of private haulers now deploy thousands of garbage trucks every night to collect about three million tons of waste per year from about 200,000 businesses. For the past five years, a coalition ...
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Better Jobs, Cleaner Air, Safer Streets

Picking Less Partisan Candidates

Boosting election participation is tricky, but there are easy ways to reform to produce candidates who reflect a broader swath of voter sentiment

September is over, and with it summer, Labor Day, the celebration of National Potato Month… and the 2018 primary election season. Just two month before the November election that could decide the nation’s political course for the next two years, candidates have finally been selected in a process that began in some ...
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Picking Less Partisan Candidates

Protesting Kavanaugh

Hundreds of women, plus a few men, arrested protesting Kavanaugh confirmation

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court stretched out for the month of September as the Hart Senate Office Building was repeatedly occupied by protesters. Led by the Center for Popular Democracy but mobilized by several different groups, the protesters were overwhelmingly female, ...
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Protesting Kavanaugh

Wearing It On Our Sleeves

A Millennial’s Response to Christine Blasey Ford

Lately I’ve taken to wearing t-shirts, buttons, and pins that clearly identify me. “Dyke,” reads one, succinctly. “Black Lives Matter,” reads another, a gift from my girlfriend. “Fesbian Leminist” I include for an element of humor. It isn’t enough, I convince myself in the wake of the 2016 election, to merely ...
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Wearing It On Our Sleeves