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Habermas on the Legitimacy of Lockdown

Habermas argued that the state’s duty to protect life outweighed all individual rights. His critics accused him of authoritarianism.

February 23, 2022 • by Peter J. Verovšek

Jürgen Habermas recently argued that the pandemic measures of the German government hadn’t gone far enough. To weigh the state’s duty to protect life against other rights and freedoms was unconstitutional, he warned. In the ensuing controversy, critics accused him of authoritarianism. ...

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For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

February 1, 2022 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Marci Shore

How do we understand both the uses and disadvantages of thinking across time and space? How do we negotiate the fact that in any biography or historical event, there are both elements that are unique, and elements that are universal? For me, these questions belonged to a larger question: namely, ...

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A Permanent Scar

COVID-19’s impact on young people’s futures

January 12, 2022 • by William Hayward

Almost two years after the onset of the pandemic, young people in Europe are reflecting on the impact it has had on their lives and questioning what it will mean for their future prospects. Will the lives of European youth be precarious for years to come?...

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Who Should Tell Pauli Murray’s Story?

Why a white documentarian should have stepped aside and created space for a Black filmmaker

December 1, 2021 • by Benje Williams

My hand is trembling as I stick it into the dark air. I wasn’t planning on asking a question. Definitely not this question. But it needs to be asked, and I don’t see any other Black people in this theater in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. “I’m so glad My ...

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How COVID-19 Became a Crisis

To understand what went wrong, look at how the problem is framed

November 3, 2021 • by Janet Roitman

We are in crisis. Nothing could be more self-evident: a global pandemic has ravaged the human species. But wait—what does it mean to call an open-ended event that is playing out over a period of years a “crisis"? If humans live with viruses, how is Covid-19, and the diseases it triggers, a crisis for the human species and our ...

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Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties

Will admitting a “tragic mistake” change the way we wage war?

September 21, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

Last Friday, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie of U.S. Central Command admitted that the August 29 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that the U.S. had claimed hit ISIS-K fighters had instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children. This “tragic mistake,” as he called it, at the very end of the ...

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Retiring Does Not Mean Throwing in the Towel

Closing one chapter on work allows so much else to begin

August 11, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

_____ I’m out of there! I’ve stepped down as a tenured professor at The New School for Social Research. I came up through the ranks, advancing from Assistant Professor to Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology. Along the way, there were stints as Chair of the Department of Sociology and Liberal ...

Retiring Does Not Mean Throwing in the Towel

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Slavery Made Economic Thinking Possible

An excerpt from “Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic”

June 14, 2021 • by Jennifer L. Morgan

_____ In the 1640s, as a child, Elizabeth Keye found herself misidentified on an estate in Virginia. A white boy named John Keye called her “Black Besse.” Overhearing it, the overseer’s wife “checked him and said[,] Sirra you must call her Sister for shee is your Sister,” whereupon “the said John Keye ...

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Why We Should Ban Pets

It’s time to retire the cages, aquariums, and leashes for good

May 12, 2021 • by Hannah Arsenault-Gallant

_____ Adoption centres, breeders, and rescue facilities have experienced a surge in demand for companion animals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The dramatic rise in companion animals during the pandemic is no coincidence. Public health measures have forced the relocation of office workers to the comfort of their homes, making it convenient ...

Capitalism

The Communism of Love

How the COVID pandemic has revealed anew the importance of Marx’s Gemeinwesen

May 5, 2021 • by Richard Gilman-Opalsky

_____ Marx was transfixed by the Gemeinwesen, a German word meant to grasp the essence of human community, the state of human relations. Marx did not think a world of exchange built around the relation of labor to capital made for the healthiest Gemeinwesen, and he wanted a different one. He ...

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Resilience in a Time of Plague: A Personal Account

During a crisis, the people who cope best are those who help others

April 21, 2021 • by Roxana Toma

_____ You probably heard this slogan throughout the pandemic – “We’re all in this together.” But is that really true? After all, the affluent and the young had a radically different experience of the pandemic than the poor and elderly. And how do we help ourselves when we are experiencing an ...

Resilience in a Time of Plague: A Personal Account

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Vietnamese in America

A cross generational conversation about culture and identity

April 21, 2021 • by Phuong-Cac Nguyen

_____ I hadn’t fully grasped it until most recently, but my identity has always been amorphous. When I came of age in Southern California, I didn’t feel so different than my fellow Gen X peers. I was lost, perpetually grumpy, restless — which wasn’t different from what I was seeing in ...