Politics Archives - Page 6 of 105

Democracy

A Dystopian Novel for Our Times

What being tyrannized tastes like

May 15, 2025 • by Susan Yelavich

On one level, the premise of Prophet Song (Oneworld, 2023), the recent Booker-winning novel by the Irish writer Paul Lynch, is simple enough: It’s about the existential dilemmas a mother faces in an authoritarian state. But on every other level, Prophet Song exceeds the expectations of a dystopian tale. Instead ...

Activism

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

When Russian students decided to stop studying at the institutions where they get educated by the whip

May 15, 2025 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya and Leo Tolstoy

Some lines written very long ago seem to have been written for the current moment. At the University of St. Petersburg in the spring of 1899, students protested the government’s policies and their pressure on university administration. Upon learning about student unrest and being urged by student delegates who were ...

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

Colonization

How Israel Freezes Palestinian Salaries

Clearance revenues have got to go

May 14, 2025 • by Lamees Farraj

Israeli occupation of Palestine oppresses the Palestinian people using every possible tool and method—including control over people’s livelihoods. Some of this economic warfare is highly visible: the destruction of economic infrastructure in Gaza, the prevention of Palestinian laborers from accessing the Israeli job market, and the restriction or denial of ...

Literature

Whitman, Spiritual Decay, and the Last Light of American Faith

In dark times, the sacred work is not to flee but to testify

May 14, 2025 • by Yahia Lababidi

I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the ...

Whitman, Spiritual Decay, and the Last Light of American Faith

Democracy

The Administrative State, Its Democratic Deficits, and How to Fix Them in Comparative Historical Perspective

Or, why should ordinary citizens trust unelected experts anymore?

May 8, 2025 • by Mark Frazier, James Miller, Kim Lane Scheppele and Julia Sonnevend

Good evening, my name is Jim Miller. I am a professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research, and I have organized, and will be moderating tonight’s panel with the ungainly title, on bureaucracy and its discontents. To discuss the tensions created by professing democracy as ...

The Administrative State, Its Democratic Deficits, and How to Fix Them in Comparative Historical Perspective

Activism

“The Amazon Is Not a Warehouse”

A conversation with Dionéia Ferreira on the Amazonian Transdisciplinary Network

May 8, 2025 • by Dionéia Ferreira, Eduardo Staszowski and Renata Zampronio

Dionéia Ferreira is a scholar, environmental activist, and community leader in southern Amazonas, Brazil, where she plays a key role in weaving together RETA, the Amazonian Transdisciplinary Network. RETA connects local communities, women leaders, researchers, and legal actors across the territory surrounding the BR-319 highway—a controversial infrastructure project at the ...

Prisons and Police

Cooking Noodles on Rikers Island

In their new book, City Time, former inmates David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan take a sociological look at life inside

May 6, 2025 • by Carina Filemyr

Not only is Rikers Island geographically isolated—a landmass situated on the East River between the Bronx and Queens—but what happens there is kept out of the public’s sight. Journalists are given limited entry into day-to-day life on the island, which houses the city's largest jail. Now, in City Time: On ...

Latin America & Caribbean

The Working-Class Venezuelans at the Center of Trump’s “Crisis”

Xenophobic rhetoric divides immigrant communities

May 2, 2025 • by Erick Moreno Superlano

Alex was trembling when he entered the café. He had agreed to participate in my research on Venezuelan immigration in New York and we had decided to discuss his story over coffee. But as he walked down the street to meet me, an ICE van had pulled over and parked ...

The Working-Class Venezuelans at the Center of Trump’s “Crisis”

History

The Vision of Hegemony Driving Israel’s Regional Policy

From “periphery doctrine” to open domination

April 28, 2025 • by Emmanuel Guerisoli

Over a long twentieth century of regional tussles, Israel’s local foreign policy focus has shifted from preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon toward a campaign for outright domination. The strategy has shattered the Middle East’s fragile and imperfect status quo, the stability of which was closely connected to the ...

The Vision of Hegemony Driving Israel’s Regional Policy

Activism

Serbia’s Popular Protest Movement and Why It Matters

Students have adopted the dynamics of plenums and public assemblies where collective decisions are made without centralized leadership

April 25, 2025 • by Jorge González Arocha

In recent months, Serbia has witnessed one of the most significant social movements in its entire history—and one of the most important in contemporary Europe led mainly by students. What began as a response to a tragic accident in Novi Sad that left 16 people dead quickly grew into a ...

Serbia’s Popular Protest Movement and Why It Matters

Politics

The Left Needs a Better Defense of Trans People

Stop emphasizing population size and start talking policy

April 24, 2025 • by Amelia Nonemacher

In the opening months of the Trump administration, the full power of the state has been deployed to suppress the rights of trans people to access healthcare, play sports, change their gender marker on official documents, and use public bathrooms, among other attacks. These policies have been critiqued by LGBTQ+ ...

The Left Needs a Better Defense of Trans People

Higher Ed

Paying for College Was Already Stressful. Then Came Trump and DOGE.

A Q and A on today’s higher ed money worries

April 16, 2025 • by Center for New York City Affairs and Kim Nauer

Urban Matters: Kim, there’s certainly a lot of confusion about the future of the US Department of Education right now. I know you were in Washington earlier this month looking for some answers. But first: For those who haven’t gone through the process—or who have blissfully forgotten what it can be ...