Walking This Road Together

A conversation with historian Linda Hirshman about interracial alliances, social movements, and her new book, The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation

Linda Hirshman is a lawyer and cultural historian whose book The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation, is making its debut this week. Linda, a historian of social movements who is also the author of books about the feminist and gay rights ...
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Walking This Road Together

Loneliness, The New Issue of Social Research

The New School journal introduces its latest issue

time of social distancing: a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the latest issue of Social Research engages itself with a reconsideration of the ideas about loneliness in American Culture. The literature explores the concept of loneliness, as is present in a number of notable books: David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd; ...
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Loneliness, The New Issue of Social Research

Why Privatization Is Worse Than You Know

An argument for more, and better, government

Many people think privatization only means contracting for a prison or selling off a water system, but my definition is broader: private control of, and power over, public goods. By public goods, I mean things that we all depend on, essential services. So that includes prisons, but it also includes ...
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Why Privatization Is Worse Than You Know

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Award-winning historians Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston spoke (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss their new book Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Edited by Nichols and Preston with fellow historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the collection of curated essays discusses what American grand strategy ...
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Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

Can We Talk about Race?

An award-winning journalist says yes—it isn’t easy, but everyone can learn to do it

Celeste Headlee, an award-winning journalist, professional speaker and author of We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter (Harper Wave, 2018), and Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving (Harmony, 2021) met (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss writing about the difficult conversations that need to happen ...
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Can We Talk about Race?

Unearthing the Complexities of Girlhood with Melissa Febos

In this interview with Public Seminar, the memoirist discusses complex mother/daughter dynamics, enthusiastic consent, and finding clarity through the “privacy of the page.”

New School alum and bestselling author Melissa Febos sat down (virtually) with Public Seminar intern Madeleine Janz to discuss writing about those you love most, complicated “almost” traumas, and the inherited shame of female adolescence. Febos’s newest book, an essay collection entitled Girlhood (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), was on The New School’s Alumni Bookshelf this year and is available for purchase here.   Madeleine Janz [MJ]: To ...
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Unearthing the Complexities of Girlhood with Melissa Febos

For the Freedom to Vote

The protection of voting rights seems more vital than ever

_____ This week, the team of Democratic senators working on a voting rights measure that could meet the demands of conservative Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin released their bill. The 592-page document is described as a bill “to expand Americans’ access to the ballot box and reduce the influence of ...
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For the Freedom to Vote

A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

Alexandra Kleeman chats with Helen Schulman about her new book, Something New Under the Sun

_____ Upon the publication of her new novel, Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), New School faculty Alexandra Kleeman sat down with Helen Schulman, faculty and fiction chair at the Creative Writing program, to talk about Los Angeles, the climate crisis, and writing about the very near future. The interview was presented by the Creative Writing ...
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A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

In the Aftermath of War

What the post-1975 history of the Vietnam War should teach us about the days, months, and years after the United States leaves Afghanistan

_____ As the military situation in Afghanistan began to unspool at the end of July, and comparisons to the United States 1975 evacuation of Saigon proliferated, I wanted to know more. So I reached for Amanda Demmer’s After Saigon's Fall: Refugees and US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2021) to think ...
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In the Aftermath of War

The Un-Canceling of Biographer Blake Bailey

W.W. Norton took a financial bath on Philip Roth: A Biography, and Skyhorse Press will make all the profits. Is this the end of cancel culture?

_____ A little less than three months ago, charges emerged that Blake Bailey had groomed female middle school students for sex and that he had pestered and sexually assaulted adult women. After what were undoubtedly agonizing internal debates, W.W. Norton exercised the morals clause in Bailey’s contract, putting his 2014 memoir ...
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The Un-Canceling of Biographer Blake Bailey

Is Bad Faith Sabotaging the Fight Against Covid?

To our country’s elites, it makes perfect sense that if the CDC wants the public’s trust, it has to do better

_____ Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA Today. Earlier this month, her newspaper ran an interview between her and her brother. Chris Carroll refuses to get vaccinated. He’s educated, conservative, religious, and Texas-proud. He’s a Trump supporter, too. Nicole ran the piece to explain why some Americans refuse to do ...
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Is Bad Faith Sabotaging the Fight Against Covid?