From the Editors Archives - Page 63 of 170

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Completing the Rape Three Decades Later

Christine Blasey Ford before the Senate

September 25, 2018 • by Maria Bucur

As I read the news this past weekend, I tried to imagine the flurry of negotiations taking place before this Thursday’s Senate hearing regarding Brett Kavanaugh’s suitability for one of the most important positions in our country: Justice of the Supreme Court. I imagined Chuck Grassley talking with his Iowa ...

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Brett Kavanaugh, Fraternity Hazing, and the Natural Beauty Industry

Past Present Episode 147

September 25, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Niki, and Natalia discuss the drama surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s upcoming Supreme Court confirmation, fraternity hazing, and the booming natural beauty industry. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s candidacy is being marred by sexual assault allegations. Natalia ...

Brett Kavanaugh, Fraternity Hazing, and the Natural Beauty Industry

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A Letter from the Valley of the Fallen

Spain wrestles with its Franquista past

September 25, 2018 • by Anna Oakes

In June, the center-left administration of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s newly appointed prime minister, announced the government’s intention to exhume Francisco Franco’s body and move it to an as-yet-undecided location. Since the announcement, a renewed national debate has broken out in Spain over Franco’s legacy. The Franco family have made clear their intentions ...

Blue Monday

With Outrage and Injustice for All

Itinerary of a thought about the Kavanaugh controversy and the public significance of a fair hearing

September 24, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues.” -Duke Ellington As readers of this column know, I believe that Trumpism -- the Trump administration, the Republican Congress, and the Trumpist Republican party -- represents a profound threat to liberal democracy, human rights, social justice, and public decency. ...

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Vertical Horizons

The Shard, a Spectacle of Capital in the City?

September 24, 2018 • by Tom Wolseley

In a city I have lived in for 30 years a transformation is occurring. It is at once obvious, in its massive demolition and construction, yet beyond my experience and understanding. It is easy to simply identify this change with a new sublime of global capital. I live and work between ...

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Becoming the Face of Change

Gerard Campbell reflects on his life journey through poetry

September 23, 2018 • by Gerard Campbell

The building was isolated, far upstate. Its residents lived in small dorm-style rooms whose doors had small windows on them. Each hallway had a staff member on one end and a staff member on the other. Everyone had to be accounted for and in their place; one wrong move and ...

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The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller

Keller is well known for being blind, but deserves to be heralded for her progressive social vision

September 22, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

The Texas Board of Education recently voted to remove Helen Keller from the state’s required social studies curriculum. This is a good excuse to remind people about Keller, who is one of the most iconic public figures of the past century but whose life and legacy is misunderstood. Most people think ...

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The New Political Reality

Trumpism as White Minority Rule

September 21, 2018 • by Sanford Schram

Okay, Trump is not Hitler: that is a less than perfect comparison. And the racists making robocalls are not the Brown Shirts or Storm Troopers of Kristallnacht. Those calls, however, are increasing in frequency, going beyond dog whistling to outright race-baiting, whether it is against African American candidates for Florida’s governor or ...

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Machine Learning and the Project of Autonomy

Technology in the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis

September 20, 2018 • by Conrad Moriarty-Cole

“Every society creates its own world, internal and external, and of this creation technique is neither an instrument nor a cause; it is a dimension… an everywhere dense sub-set. For it is present at every point at which the society constitutes what is, for it, the real-rational.” Cornelius Castoriadis, Crossroads in the ...

Machine Learning and the Project of Autonomy

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I Believe Christine Blasey Ford

Republicans have no plausible argument about why Brett Kavanaugh is innocent

September 19, 2018 • by Claire Potter

What will come of the allegation by Christine Blasey Ford, a clinical psychologist and professor at Palo Alto University, that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when he was seventeen and she was fifteen? As of today, it is not clear that Ford will testify before the Senate ...

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A Kaleidoscopic Novel of Radiant Beauty

The new English Translation of Ondjaki’s Transparent City

September 19, 2018 • by Bongani Kona

To read the full review of Transparent City, visit the Johannesburg Review of Books – a trove of reviews, essays, poetry, photographs and short fiction from South Africa, Africa and beyond. In Cape Town, in the early nineteen-seventies, construction began on what would be known as the Foreshore Freeway Bridge. Designed with the intent ...

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Bagel Capitalism

September 18, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

As we approach Yom Kippur, a day of both fasting and forgiveness, I wish to offer a sermon about food. Specifically, the bagel, which has become both a symbol and symptom of some of the worst aspects of American capitalism. Let me explain. Growing up in Plainfield, N.J. in the 1950s, ...