The Current Situation in Catalonia

Part two on Catalonia’s constitutional crisis

This piece is part of a two-part series. Part One is meant to contextualize Pradel’s essay. The Election on December 21st, 2017 The Catalonian independence movement won what appears like a clear victory on December 21. All the same, Ciudadanos (Citizens Party), a liberal pro-unity party that calls themselves “post-nationalist” won the majority ...
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The Current Situation in Catalonia

America’s Hunger Games

The normalization of mass shootings will only stop when a majority of citizens start acting

In the dystopian novels of Suzanne Collins, the Capitol organizes annual Hunger Games, in which twenty-four youth – one boy and one girl from each peripheral district, which resemble colonies – are forced to fight to the death. The children, who are selected by lottery and mostly poor, are trained, ...
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America’s Hunger Games

Contextualizing Catalonia

Part One on Catalonia’s constitutional crisis

In the early- to mid-twentieth century, repeated regime changes instigated the devolution of power from a centralized government to localized authorities. The desire for a stabilized, democratic form of government prevailed in the late 1970s with the fall of General Franco. Spain is comprised of seventeen autonomous regions. The Spanish Constitution of 1978, states ...
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Contextualizing Catalonia

Democracy Dies in Darkness

A keynote address from the Dramaturgies of Resistance conference

I have been fascinated by a dimension of political life that occurred in the latter part of the twentieth century in both non-democratic and democratic contexts. I think of this dimension -- something I experienced myself -- as closely related to the politics of hope, and I call it performative. Just ...
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Brown and Blue

Further thoughts on gun violence, fascism, and resistance

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington I’m still moanin’ about the high school massacre in Parkdale, Florida. Moaning, and thinking. About guns, and politics, and history. The massacre was horrendous, but also distinctively compelling, insofar as the extraordinary response of the Marjory Stoneman ...
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Brown and Blue

The Korean War Today: A Roundtable on the U.S. and the Two Koreas

Livestreaming the Marilyn B. Young Memorial Lecture.

On Friday, February 23rd, 2018 at 6:00 pm, Public Seminar will be livestreaming the Marilyn B. Young lecture, described below, on our Facebook page.  Marilyn B. Young (1937-2017) was an influential historian of U.S. foreign policy, a feminist, and a prominent public critic of America’s endless wars in the twentieth and ...
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The Korean War Today: A Roundtable on the U.S. and the Two Koreas

Public Seminar is LIVE from #CPAC2018

Thursday, February 22 2018

3:20 PM: Ted Cruz is absolutely running for President in 2020. Cruz ran onto the stage with that candidate look, waving and spreading his arms wide to make himself look bigger than he is. "I love CPAC!" he shouted, and for the first time since I entered the press pen, the conversation ...
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Public Seminar is LIVE from #CPAC2018

After the Parkland Massacre, What?

A conversation between left and right about gun control

Joseph Castillo and I met in the fall of 1976 as first year students at Yale University. He was from the southwest, I was from the Northeast; he was a science major, and I was an English major. Joe became an engineer and entrepreneur and I became a history professor, ...
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After the Parkland Massacre, What?

Moanin’

On gun violence in the United States

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington There was another school shooting this past week. This one was at a high school in Parkland, Florida. A disgruntled and clearly disturbed 19-year-old former student arrived on school grounds with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, entered ...
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Moanin’

The Sidewinder

Race, resistance, and the blues

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In the past week I have thought often about “The Sidewinder.” “The Sidewinder” is a famous jazz standard written by the late, great trumpeter Lee Morgan, which appeared on his 1964 album of the same name. ...
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The Sidewinder