From the Editors Archives - Page 87 of 170

Education

Why We Strike

An announcement from SENS-UAW Strike Committee

May 7, 2018 • by SENS-UAW Strike Committee

The New School administration has completely abandoned the progressive principles on which it was founded. Sidestepping demands from the community to declare The New School a sanctuary campus, the administration is engaging in widespread union-busting practices while shelling out millions for flagship buildings and fancy new fonts. With an ongoing ...

Blue Monday

Primary Contests

Further thoughts on consonance and dissonance

May 7, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In the coming week, millions of Americans will go to the polls on May 8 to determine which candidates will run in the upcoming November general election. The November election is particularly important given the ...

Feature

Black Aesthetic/Aesthetic Black

Race, Space, and the Possibilities of Becoming

May 7, 2018 • by Brandi Thompson Summers

How do we recognize blackness? Is it something we feel? According to recent data, medical professionals believe we don’t feel pain at the same intensity as white people, and therefore are administered less pain medication. Is it something we taste? Black culinary traditions are rooted in history and experience, but only a few ...

Feature

Unstable or Low-Wage Jobs Make Up More than Half of Older Workers’ Job Growth

April 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

May 6, 2018 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

The Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported a 3.0% unemployment rate for workers age 55 and older in April, a decrease of 0.2 percentage points since March. While this number is low, we continue to hear stories of older workers struggling in the modern economy, such as Doug Schifter, a livery cab driver in ...

Unstable or Low-Wage Jobs Make Up More than Half of Older Workers’ Job Growth

Feature

“Weaponized Babies”

Or, Damn, Why Didn’t I Think of Using That Term?

May 5, 2018 • by Janet Golden

News that Senator Tammy Duckworth brought her baby to the Senate floor for a vote thrilled some and infuriated others. Prior debate over whether babies belonged in the Senate sparked some great pro- and anti-baby remarks that pundits and scholars will enjoy parsing and quoting in coming days, weeks, months… or until ...

Feature

The Democracy Seminar, Then and Now

An Invitation

May 4, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We are imagining a forum for activists and thinkers who support democracy against the looming global threats of authoritarianism. The definitive feature would be openness. It would be a direct outgrowth of a small, international, at first clandestine, informal and improvised New School project, “The Democracy Seminar,” first proposed by ...

Feature

Memory, Justice, History, and the “Right” to be Forgotten

Reflections on Georgetown’s Slave Legacy

May 4, 2018 • by Tim Lacy

For the past two years, since the publication of a front-page New York Times story on Georgetown University’s sale of 272 slaves, I’ve been following the saga how the university has dealt with this information. By way of context, Georgetown is one of 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. When the Society of Jesus ...

Memory, Justice, History, and the “Right” to be Forgotten

Feature

From Velvet Revolution to Velvet Dictatorship

Reflections on Democratic Regression

May 3, 2018 • by Adam Michnik

Let me start by describing how communism died. The first thing to perish was the communist faith. And this faith had two dimensions. It was a faith in the project of a just world, a world of solidarity and freedom. And it was a conviction that people had finally deciphered ...

Feature

A Historian Obsessed With the Present

Political memoir changes the questions I ask of the past

May 2, 2018 • by Claire Potter

If, at some point, a new diagnosis is announced that describes people who can't stop purchasing and reading books about the 2016 presidential campaign, I could be one of the first to sign up for treatment. I imagine that while wellness professionals will recommend some combination of meditation and exercise, ...

Feature

Sean Hannity, Gayborhoods, and Running Tutus

Past Present Episode 128

May 2, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Natalia, Neil, and Niki debate the Sean Hannity phenomenon, battles over the “gayborhood,” and the popularity of running tutus.

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Sean Hannity, Gayborhoods, and Running Tutus

Feature

The Face of ‘Post-Truth’ Politics

Observations from the trenches

May 2, 2018 • by Mykola Balaban

‘Post-truth’ is a concept that has been much discussed in recent years. But what is it like to experience its effects for real? Mykola Balaban, a history student and soldier, describes how it feels to be attacked with ‘non-existent’ rockets, and how one can come to doubt even one’s own ...

Feature

What Do Military Attacks Accomplish?

Effective Action in Syria

May 1, 2018 • by Richard D. Anderson

When, on April 7, Syrian aircraft dropped canisters of toxic chlorine -- and maybe the chemical weapon sarin -- on the city of Douma, in an attack that killed seventy civilians, for once President Donald Trump spoke the truth: he called repeated chemical attacks “crimes of a monster.” On April ...