Why the House and Senate Tax Bills Spell Disaster for Graduate Students

The GOP tax bill will raise the barrier to entry for American graduate education

Even though the measure enacted by the Senate still has to be reconciled with the House-passed version, the following repercussions are expected to occur. Firstly, the bill will affect charitable giving, which allows colleges and universities to fulfill their teaching, research and public service missions. Currently, the deductions for charitable ...
Read More
Placeholder

Debt Comes for Us All

Students protest against the new GOP tax bill

A graduate student walks by with a sign that reads: “TAXED OUT OF COLLEGE!” Early on Saturday morning, December 2nd 2017, the Republican Senate passed the new GOP Tax Bill, only days after students from across New York City joined together to protest it. While President Trump states that “people are going to be very, ...
Read More
Placeholder

Minority Women are Not Protected by the Law

Domestic Violence and Undocumented Women

This is essay is part of the OOPS course Law and Sexuality. A 2015 study by the ACLU on Domestic Violence (DV) and policing found that nationwide 88% of respondents reported that police sometimes or often do not believe victims or blame victims for the violence. This relationship of mistrust between police ...
Read More
Placeholder

The War on Higher Education

Why tax reform is a clear and present danger to universities

Although the media have provided coverage of this issue, they are understandably more focused on those aspects of the bill that will exacerbate the existing disparity between the wealthiest 1-2 percent of the population and rest of the country, a policy apparently based on “trickle down” economic theory that many ...
Read More
Placeholder

Being a Woman is Work

How capitalist society (de) values ‘female’ labor

This is essay is part of the OOPS course Law and Sexuality. The current division of labor has been perceived as equal for many, but remains impractical in the long term, especially in our contemporary capitalist America. The challenges that come with capitalism, such as inflation and recession, has forced each member ...
Read More
Placeholder

#MeToo

Thinking beyond legitimation through social media

Legitimation is double edged: it is crucial that, politically, we lay claim to intelligibility and recognizability; and it is crucial, politically, that we maintain a critical and transformative relation to the norms that govern what will and will not count as an intelligible and recognizable (28) In the case of sexual ...
Read More
Placeholder

The Necessary Politicization of Reproductive Autonomy

Why we should create quotas for female politicians

The historical and cultural oppression of women has been perpetuated and exacerbated by the restriction of access to health care. Women should be allowed autonomy over their bodies, not just to gain control over their reproductive rights, but also to elevate themselves in both cultural and political spheres. Childbearing, in ...
Read More
Placeholder

Can Marriage Ever Be Really Equal?

Law and Sexuality

This is essay is part of the OOPS course Law and Sexuality. Assuming the heterosexual marriage contract is a tool used by men to exploit women and marriage an institution by which the unpaid labor of women is extorted and appropriated by their husbands, do non-heterosexual marriages reproduce the same form ...
Read More
Placeholder

Cultural Studies Threatened in Poland

An Interview with Ewa Majewska

  Ewa Majewska, could you first sketch out for me a little about your own work? I am a feminist philosopher who is currently working on theories of subaltern counter-publics in the peripheries, weak resistances, and the avant-gardes. I am also interested in the resistance to fascism, and for this some Habermassian belief ...
Read More
Placeholder

Syllabus: From Goldwater to Trump

A Political History of Tea Party America

In order to think this through with students, I re-did the course, and the syllabus below that I am teaching this fall is what I came up with. ___________________________________________________ This course is a survey of United States political history and domestic policy that puts the evolution of the American presidency at its ...
Read More
Placeholder

Law and Sexuality

A course and syllabus from Eugene Lang College

Course Outline August 28 // Introductory Class Presentation of the syllabus and course outline August 30 // Class 01 : History of Law and Sexuality We “Other Victorians”, Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, pp. 3-13 Extra Material: Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism, Kristen R. Ghodsee, in NYT, 8/22/2017 Confrontation: Paris, 1968, Documentary by Seymour ...
Read More
Placeholder

Judgment and Decision Making

Syllabus for GPSY 6421

#1 01/26 Introduction ·       How We Know What Isn’t So – Chapters 1-2 ·       Thinking Fast and Slow – Chapter 1-3 #2 02/02 Heuristics and biases ·       Thinking Fast and Slow - Chapters 10-15 ·       Gilovich, T., & Savitsky, K. (1996). Like goes with like: The role of representativeness in erroneous and pseudoscientific beliefs. Skeptical Inquirer, 20, 34-40 ·       Deri, S., ...
Read More
Placeholder