Politics Archives - Page 107 of 110

Feature

Misrepresentation and Misrecognition

Steve King’s American Exceptionalism and its Ties to the “Slaves were Immigrants, too” Thesis

March 30, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

I don’t want to spend much time on King’s comments themselves, but let’s note here the way that “American civilization” is equated with “Western civilization”. Let’s also note that other civilizations are inferior to this civilization, precisely because other civilizations “produce very little freedom,” while “our” superior civilization produces more. ...

Politics

Focus, Please

A plea to the Left

March 22, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

The split on the left is less functional than polemical and ideological. Center-left liberals, a.k.a. “the Democratic establishment”, still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s Electoral College defeat, view the Trump administrations’ Russia-troubles, not to mention his executive orders, with white-knuckled alarm. Thus they tend to view his regime as at least ...

Politics

Progressive Media is Losing

But It Doesn’t Have To

March 21, 2017 • by Claire Potter

In "Progressives Need to Build Their Own Media," Hertsgaard details a game plan to counter the effects, not just of Fox News, but of the cluster of television, radio and websites that surround Fox like planets rotating around the sun. Conservative media have won the political narrative, he argues, and ...

Feature

(Not) Coming to Terms with the Past

Race, Injustice and Social Policy in “Postracial” America

March 15, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

A week later, on March 6th, Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), waded into similarly troubled waters when he claimed -- in an address to HUD employees -- “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in ...

Activism

Punching Nazis in the Face

A philosopher makes the case for violent resistance

March 6, 2017 • by Eric Anthamatten

My human dignity lay in this punch to the jaw... —Jean Améry, At The Mind's Limits As white supremacist Richard Spencer was being interviewed on camera, a masked protester punched him square in the jaw. Many conservatives looked at this as evidence of "cry-baby” liberalism: unable to handle alternative points of view, ...

Democracy

What is Political Resistance?

An exploration of the word and its political connotations

February 16, 2017 • by William E. Scheuerman

Resistance now serves as a useful catch-all phrase for a diverse collection of individuals and groups outraged by our reactionary president and his allies in Congress. The term’s popularity rests on the sound shared intuition that the only way to stop Trump’s relentless Twitter-powered presidency is by no less relentless ...

Education

Durkheim’s Enduring Relevance

Sociology offers a solution to the problems raised by Critical Theory

February 7, 2017 • by Nicola Marcucci

Émile Durkheim and the Durkheimian school also allow us to rethink the tension between the modern social sciences, and morality and politics. However, Durkheim’s analysis of this tension is, in some respects, divergent from the one put forward by Critical Theory. Sociology, according to Durkheim, is neither about supplementing the ...

Activism

Today We Filled the Sidewalk

Marching Against Racism and Homophobia in Iowa

January 27, 2017 • by Lauren Louise Anderson

Perhaps in response to these concerns, in the last week, the leaders made an intentional decision to diversify the speakers. I got an invitation to speak, and so did four others I suggested. The four included two students, a Black Muslim American, and a perceived to be Black (though, as ...

Feature

Paris Terror Events and the Dramaturgies of the Aftermath

January 10, 2017 • by Public Seminar

Daniel Dayan is a fellow of the Marcel Mauss Institute (School of Advanced Study in the Social Sciences) and a professor at the Levinas European Institute. Dayan has been Research director at CNRS-Paris, and a visiting professor at Sciences-Po and the universities of Stanford, Geneva, Tel Aviv, and Oslo. He has also been an Annenberg scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and for many years a ...

Feature

The Armenian Violence Question

A Conversation on Means and Social Change

December 13, 2016 • by Tamar Shirinian and Nelli Sargsyan

How do we make sense of a general population's acceptance of militarization? We see the following conversation as an attempt to entangle and disentangle some of the complexities of this particular historical juncture in post-Soviet Armenia. In reflecting on the Armenian experience and on the larger process of postsocialism and ...

Politics

After the Firebombing: A Letter from Hillsborough, NC

November 8, 2016 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

When the GOP office was firebombed in the early hours of Sunday, October 16, 2016, FBI and ATF descended on Hillsborough. We are known mostly for our many famous writers and for being one of America's "coolest" small towns. "I don't think this represents the Democrats or really anybody in ...

Education

How to Think through Cages

November 3, 2016 • by Santiago Zabala

What I liked so much about these suggestions was the subtle call to think without fear and without expectations. The cages will always be there, but I came to understand how important it is to create a philosophical cage that allows you to leave it. When would leaving become necessary? ...