Politics Archives - Page 98 of 109

Blue Monday

Damascus Blues

On the bombing of Syria

April 16, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington As promised by our Bloviator-in-Chief, we bombed Syria last Friday, inauspiciously the 13th of April. It was not the first time the United States has bombed Syria. The US has been conducting a low-intensity air war against ISIS, in ...

Blue Monday

Alabama on My Mind

A blues reflection on Martin Luther King, Jr.

April 9, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This past week was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. King is ever-present in our public consciousness, related to the iconic status he has assumed over the years, and to the fact that his birthday is celebrated as a national holiday ...

Feature

Two Europes, Not Quite the Same

Cedric Robinson’s concept of racial capitalism in Eastern Europe

April 3, 2018 • by Elena Gagovska

Yugoslavia was in a state of bloody mayhem. Bullets whistled back and forth across the streets from the weapons of invisible shooters, snipers. But as the shells vied to wipe out passersby, reduce thousand-year-old bridges to dust, and the formerly ‘new’ philosophers vied to shame us, going out of their ...

North America

Damon Linker is Wrong About Liberals

Here’s why

April 3, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Damon Linker is a respected writer, columnist for The Week, and editor (University of Pennsylvania Press). He is also a Facebook friend of mine. I enjoy his columns, and often exchange comments with him. He has offered strong and admirable criticisms of Trump, and of the ways the Republican party and ...

Blue Monday

Backlash Blues

A reflection on democracy in the streets of Sacramento

April 2, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington On the evening of Sunday, March 18 Stephon Clark was shot to death by officers of the Sacramento Police Department responding to a report that a young black man had been seen vandalizing cars in ...

Education

The Parthenon as a Mediator between Greek Mathematics and Liberal Education

An excerpt from Michael Weinman and Geoff Lehman’s latest book

April 2, 2018 • by Michael Weinman and Geoff Lehman

We propose here to pursue a method of speculative reconstruction to detail what can be learned about the “state of the art” in the early development of “liberal education” in ﬁfth-century Greece. One needs to be cautious in speaking about such a development at such a time, which predates ...

The Parthenon as a Mediator between Greek Mathematics and Liberal Education

Middle East & North Africa

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The resiliency of Erdogan and the AKP, Part II

March 29, 2018 • by Can Mert Kökerer

In part one of this paper, I elaborated the conditions for Erdoğan’s and the Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s successes in Turkey. I adopted Arendt’s discussion of the degradation of factual truth into opinion in modern societies and defined post-truth politics as based on a floating political space where the ...

Middle East & North Africa

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The resiliency of Erdogan and the AKP

March 27, 2018 • by Can Mert Kökerer

This is an attempt to tell and explain the “success” story of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its founder Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current President of the Republic of Turkey. They came to power in 2002, following economic and political crises in the previous decade. The party and ...

Blue Monday

Ladies Swing the Band

A reflection on women who know stuff

March 26, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington The month of March is Women’s History Month in the United States. This was not always so. Indeed, the notion that women were important historical actors has been regarded as absurd for most times and ...

The Media

The Weirdness of U.S. vs. AT&T

An important debate over media mergers, or just another attack on CNN?

March 23, 2018 • by David Lieberman

The first thing to recognize about the antitrust trial over AT&T’s $85 billion plan to buy Time Warner -- which begins this week at the U.S. District Court in D.C. – is how fundamentally weird the whole thing is. Few really understand why the Justice Department decided to challenge the deal ...

Blue Monday

Stormy Weather

Trump in trouble

March 19, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Spring approaches. But for Donald Trump, the bane of our existence, Winter is coming still. Just this past week and a half, as another Noreaster made its way across the east coast, the tempest that is the Trump ...

Feature

Bannon at Booth

A conflict between principle and strategy?

March 15, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

Bannon, surely, needs no introduction, nor need we long belabor the reasons why the decision to invite him to speak at the University of Chicago proved controversial. Still, let’s note that in a letter of protest signed by over 100 members of the University of Chicago faculty, the rationale for objecting to ...