Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

There are currently no conversation partners for Western academics within the Russian academy

A recent issue of Aeon featured an article entitled “The Missing Conversation,” with the subtitle “To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue.” The article amounts to a conversation between the famous scientists and historians of science, professors Lorraine Daston and ...
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Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Living through war can transform how we engage with philosophy

This lecture was delivered as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic ...
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Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Thinking About Freedom in Wartime Ukraine

The philosophical implications of Zelensky’s decision to stay in Kyiv

This lecture was delivered as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic ...
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Thinking About Freedom in Wartime Ukraine

To Know Your Enemy’s Face

Russian studies and language programs face a decline in the US, despite stable demand for expertise in the field

Knowing your enemy as the key to victory is centuries-old wisdom. Washington seemed to embrace it during the Cold War, investing significant resources in the development of Soviet studies. In recent years, however, the situation has changed. Researchers and university professors are concerned about the deepening crisis in Russian studies ...
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To Know Your Enemy’s Face

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

Mass dehumanization on the other side of the garden wall

When viewed against the backdrop of what Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN has called “the most thoroughly documented genocide in history,” Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s recent film about the genocide of the Jews, takes on a deeper meaning: “The reason I made this film,” Glazer said shortly after ...
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Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s <em>Zone of Interest </em>

On The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s journey into his country’s heart of darkness

Gideon Levy, an award-winning journalist for the liberal Israeli English-language daily Haaretz, has been covering the Palestinian occupied territories since the late 1980s. His column, “Twilight Zone,” published during the Oslo process, was famously unsettling to many Israelis because he established, week after week, that the celebrated peace process was ...
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On <em>The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe</em>

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

At the Aspen Ideas Climate Summit in spring 2022—one of those gatherings of the well-informed and the well-to-do so beloved by American politicians—Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, urged Republicans to “take back” their party from Donald Trump. “This country,” the veteran Democratic leader opined, “needs a ...
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How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Venezuelans Battle a Crumbling Democracy and a Stolen Election

How a revolution ignites

Highly charged protests continue to erupt in Venezuela following President Nicolás Maduro's blatantly forged electoral results at the end of July. The US and 10 Latin American states have rejected Maduro's unsubstantiated vote certification. But rather than face mounting pressure from the opposition to release evidence of the votes behind ...
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Venezuelans Battle a Crumbling Democracy and a Stolen Election

When Politicians Make Nice

A conversation with sociologist Julia Sonnevend about her new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics

When United States president Joe Biden stumbled on the debate stage on June 27, 2024, it wasn’t that he just seemed old, it was that a man who had charmed voters for half a century with his bright smile, kindness, and folksy quips seemed to have vanished. ...

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When Politicians Make Nice

“Village NBA” in China

When sports fandom meets rural governance

The driver of bus number 25 knew where I was heading the moment I stepped inside. Although he met few foreigners during his three years on this line (as he later told me), he assumed that I could only be heading to the “NBA village” of Taipan in the Guizhou ...
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“Village NBA” in China

Very Far From the Homeland

On contemporary readings from Etel Adnan, Mahmoud Darwish, and Alice Oswald exile in the Iliad

One of the cruelties of the Iliad is how alive each person is made to appear just before they are killed. That is the point of Homer's long, detailed lists of Greeks and Trojans: names, deeds, parents, brothers, spouses, children, lovers, skills, bad hair, swift feet, words, and weapons. The poem about ...
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Very Far From the Homeland