The Quest for an Honest Broker

Are we nearing the end of the US-led peace process as we know it?

Much has been said and written on President Donald Trump’s controversial statement on Jerusalem on December 6, 2017. But there was one sentence in the speech that everyone -- the conflicting parties and the international community -- could agree on: “It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact ...
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The Quest for an Honest Broker

Bill Clinton’s Symphony of Hypocrisy and Rage

Remembering Monica Lewinsky

I used to love Bill Clinton (known in our household for years as The Big Dog) and now I just want someone to get him off the stage. Two days ago, in an interview with The Today Show's Craig Melvin about a new thriller co-written with James Patterson, former president William Jefferson ...
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Bill Clinton’s Symphony of Hypocrisy and Rage

Twinks, a Manhattan Con Artist, and the Ford Mustang

Past Present Episode 133

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate the rise of the “twink” aesthetic, Manhattan con artist Anna Sorokin/Delvey, and the cultural endurance of the Ford Mustang. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The New York Times has declared “ the age of the twink .” Neil referred to this ...
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Twinks, a Manhattan Con Artist, and the Ford Mustang

Rethinking Communication in Populist Times

A conversation on Trump and the Media

In the following interview, Yuval Katz speaks to Pablo J. Boczkowski and Zizi Papacharissi, editors of the recently published volume Trump and the Media, about Trump’s engagement with the media and the question of whether it has to be considered as exceptional or not. Pablo J. Boczkowski and Zizi Papacharissi’s introduction to Trump ...
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Rethinking Communication in Populist Times

The Election of Donald Trump and the Great Disruption in the News and Social Media

Pablo J. Boczkowski and Zizi Papacharissi’s introduction to Trump and the Media

Donald Trump's election as the 45th President of the United States came as something of a surprise -- to many analysts, journalists, and voters. The New York Times’s The Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the White House even as the returns began to come in. What ...
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The Election of Donald Trump and the Great Disruption in the News and Social Media

Changing Social Norms

An Introduction to Social Research Spring 2018 edition

Since Social Research is a quarterly journal and each of its issues is focused on a single theme, we must plan long in advance of publication and invite authors a year or two before an issue appears. As a consequence, we cannot hope to be timely, although sometimes -- almost by chance ...
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Changing Social Norms

Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue

Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue: Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century I am writing this while drinking my second cup of strong cappuccino on the veranda of Bon Pain, a wonderful small French patisserie in ...
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Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue

Sabotaging the “Summit”

Trump and the North Korean Summit Meeting

It is not unreasonable to ask whether Donald Trump and his hapless band of congressional allies are purposefully sabotaging the operations of the United States government, or are simply so incompetent that they cannot help stumbling into both dysfunction and ridicule by sheer misfortune. In all likelihood, it is a ...
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Sabotaging the “Summit”

Comments on The Arc of Protection

Toward a New International Refugee Regime

The Arc of Protection identifies major shifts in the international refugee regime, diagnoses current problems, and proposes principles to undergird reforms. The book seeks to renegotiate the existing “grand bargain” between the global South and the global North, in which the global South keeps most refugees bottled up in return for ...
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Comments on The Arc of Protection

Reasons for Hope

Integrating New York Public Schools

In the mostly pessimistic debate over school segregation here’s a reason for optimism: For the first time in decades, we have the possibility — if not yet the reality — of more economically, and also racially, integrated public schools in many neighborhoods in New York City. And there are heartening ...
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Reasons for Hope

Making Room for Democracy

On the beauty of gray, the social condition, and individual and group responsibility

In my Friday posts, I have focused on the beauty of gray, presenting arguments for the good over the ideal and for openness to people and principles other than our own. I have argued, further, that these are preconditions for acting together against the dark forces of our times, and ...
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Making Room for Democracy