The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

The Sphere of Publics and its Bifurcation

As our seminar on authoritarianism and public life progressed, we focused on the work of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, and Joshua Meyrowitz to develop an understanding of mediated public life. Their sociology of media is a sociology of mediated interactions, rather than studies of the media, i.e. major newspapers, ...
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The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

Reviewing the work of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt with an assist from Nancy Fraser

It’s been two weeks since my return from Wroclaw. I am getting over the shock of teaching about the rise of the new authoritarianism, as the Polish parliament, The Sejm, seemed to be hammering the final nails into the coffin of Polish democracy. It turned out to be a little ...
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The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

Teaching History in the Trump Era

Confessions of a Snowflake

One day in my small undergraduate historiography seminar a few years ago, one student said something really offensive to another student. I can’t really repeat the offending sentence, but it involved a racist aspersion toward a student of color and the offender invoked the name of then-candidate Trump as he ...
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Teaching History in the Trump Era

Scandals in Higher Education

Race, Class and the Struggle Over Diminishing Resources

As those of us who are college and university teachers gear up for the fall semester, our profession is briefly back in the news with a high focus on the heartbreak of college admissions. Let's start with genuine heartbreak. Last Saturday, we learned that UC Irvine had rescinded acceptances for almost 500 ...
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Scandals in Higher Education

Media, the New Authoritarianism, and Its Alternatives Update

Teaching in Wroclaw, as liberal democracy is collapsing in Poland and beyond

I am exhausted. Conducting the seminar “Media, Publics and the New Authoritarianism” at this time, and in Poland, was intense, exciting, illuminating, and depressing. Coping with a combination of illumination and despair, I did not have the time or the constitution to properly digest what we were exploring together, and ...
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Media, the New Authoritarianism, and Its Alternatives Update

The Clash of Civilizations

From Myth to Reality?

Recently, an Egyptian friend of mine posted on Facebook that an Egyptian friend of his tried to apply for an internship in France. The reply he got was shockingly disappointing and not expected at all. Without mentioning the company’s name, it said: “Thanks for your interest in an internship… I ...
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The Clash of Civilizations

Don’t Roll Back Title IX Enforcement

The Past and Future of Campus Sexual Assault Policy

The recent Title IX Listening Sessions of July 13 2017 sponsored by U. S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have prompted this week’s forum at Public Seminar. As part of the process, Secretary DeVos also hosted men’s rights activists who champion the cause of individuals claiming to be falsely ...
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Don’t Roll Back Title IX Enforcement

Gagging the Victims

Accusation as the real crime in campus sexual assault

The recent Title IX Listening Sessions of July 13 2017 sponsored by U. S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have prompted this week’s forum at Public Seminar. As part of the process, Secretary DeVos also hosted men’s rights activists who champion the cause of individuals claiming to be falsely ...
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Gagging the Victims

Not An Advocate for Students or the Public Interest

Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education

In slightly less than half a year as Secretary of Education, thus far Betsy DeVos has promoted the interests of profit- and rent-seekers in higher education over students' interests and over the public interest. Her most consequential acts affecting higher education has included removing consumer protections for current students borrowing ...
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Not An Advocate for Students or the Public Interest

Myths on the Body

What Candice Jackson would know about sexual consent if she read the research

The recent  Title IX Listening Sessions of July 13 2017 sponsored by U. S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has prompted this week's forum at Public Seminar. As part of the process, Secretary DeVos also hosted men's rights activists who champion the cause of individuals claiming to be falsely ...
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Myths on the Body

Why Do Schoolhouses Matter?

The Rise of Public Education in America

In our imagined past, we idealize the little red schoolhouse, a symbol of ourselves as a community, as a public. We dreamily recall the public schoolhouse as a place where children of the village congregated; learned their reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic; and became Americans together. Certainly, as Jonathan Zimmerman argues ...
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Why Do Schoolhouses Matter?