Not Knowing What We’ve Got Til It’s Gone

We need to both defend liberal democratic norms and institutions and address their fault lines

In my contribution to the Dissent Magazine discussion of the “Crisis of Democracy” which provided the inspiration for our reflections in this symposium, I put forward the argument that attacks on the citizenship rights of racialized ‘others’ are central to Trumpism and other variants of the populist authoritarianism of the far right that have taken ...
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Not Knowing What We’ve Got Til It’s Gone

The Crisis of Democracy is a Crisis of the Left

A capitalism transformed by a strong version of social democracy should be our political goal

It is a crisis for democracy when the left is weak and unable to mobilize its natural constituency. All I want to do today is to unpack that sentence. Why is this a crisis? Democracy requires some degree of equality, but capitalism and neo-liberal economic policies produce inequality: a steady pressure ...
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The Crisis of Democracy is a Crisis of the Left

Help! Being #AgainstTrump is Not Easy

Charting the future of democratic politics in light of Tuesday’s elections

Even by the frenetic standards of our extremely high speed society, the past week has been an eventful one in U.S. politics. On Tuesday a historic election broke records for voter turnout in a midterm election, returned the Democrats to control of the House and to the governorships of seven important states, ...
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Help! Being #AgainstTrump is Not Easy

Arrows into the Heart of Democracy

Attacks on Gender Studies and the conquest of democracy

The history of women’s suffrage taught us that democratic rights and institutions must be fought for and can never be taken for granted. They are fragile. Today, in the face of worldwide attacks on democratic rights and the neo-reactionary conquest of democracy, we desperately need to remember this. In countries such ...
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Arrows into the Heart of Democracy

Upstaging the Trump Reality Show

How Montana’s socialist ‘Plaid Shirt Guy’ hacked a Trump rally

It isn’t easy to upstage Donald Trump, but Tyler Linfesty -- a 17-year old high school student from Billings, Montana -- managed to divert attention away from the president at a recent Trump rally in his hometown. Linfesty became an immediate internet sensation on September 6 as he stood on the ...
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Upstaging the Trump Reality Show

Why I Won’t Vote for Joe Donnelly

Or the ethical and strategic limits of red-baiting

Over the past two years I have written over sixty pieces arguing that Trumpism poses a clear and present danger to liberal democracy; that an effective opposition to Trumpism must involve resistance but also the deepening of democracy; and that given the nature of the US political system, this means ...
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Why I Won’t Vote for Joe Donnelly

BREAKING: DeVos Appointee Says Foreign Spies Are in the Classroom

Programs that refuse to report on international students at government request may face cuts

On Saturday, October 27th, Diane Auer Jones, Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the Department of Education, gave a public address at the conference International Education at the Crossroads, organized in Bloomington by Indiana University. An audience of around 100, many of us migrants and persons of color, and most ...
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BREAKING: DeVos Appointee Says Foreign Spies Are in the Classroom

Civil Disobedience in the Age of Trump

Hannah Arendt on why civil disobedience is not just justifiable but politically imperative

This symposium contains essays by Mary Dietz, William E. Scheuerman, Christian Volk, Seyla Benhabib, and Jeffrey C. Isaac that engage with the obvious and meaningful resonances between Crises of the Republic and the present. They were originally presented in August at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Boston, in a ...
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Why I Play the Blues

A Very Brief Reflection on the Meaning of Politics and its Limits

The “Blue Monday” column began as a way of integrating the two passions of my life: politics and music and especially jazz. Readers will have noted that lately I have strayed from this purpose, and my columns have become political commentaries pure and simple. My obsession with politics is in part an ...
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Why I Play the Blues

Is Elizabeth Warren Native American?

What the DNA controversy reveals about race, identity politics, and the Native American present

It’s Monday morning. I open up my Twitter feed and see the video Elizabeth Warren made to answer charges made by Donald Trump, taken up by Trump enthusiasts everywhere, that she has pretended to be a Native American. I thought: this video is pretty good. If you haven’t seen it, you ...
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Is Elizabeth Warren Native American?

Getting Millennials to the Polls

An Extra-Credit Assignment on Voting and Citizenship

As commentators across the political spectrum agree, the upcoming U.S. elections on Election Day, November 6, are very important in determining the future of American democracy. Readers of this column know that the only filter on my political opinions is the filter of language itself. I say what I think. I ...
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Getting Millennials to the Polls