Essays

Activism

Turning Art into a Political Weapon

Scholars Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov discuss the aesthetics and significance of the Chilean estallido

September 21, 2022 • by , and
Wearing protest iconography was also a way to support the movement. And it was potentially risky. You could wear a handkerchief to cover your eyes from tear gas or to make yourself more anonymous or you could wear a green scarf to support reproductive rights. ...

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Turning Art into a Political Weapon
Activism

The Walls of Santiago

How the Joker and Pikachu become symbols of the Chilean social uprising, in an excerpt from Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov’s new book

September 21, 2022 • by and
Humor provided a powerful weapon in the fight to topple the civic-military dictatorship. The radical deprivation of human rights during the Pinochet regime had secondary costs, among which were the loss of a sense of freedom, spontaneity, and overall well-being. ...

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The Walls of Santiago
Education

The Politics of Student Loan Cancellation

The American Left needs to keep pressing for more ambitious solutions to the problem of student debt

September 15, 2022 • by
Biden’s action on student debt indicates that Americans may be ready to move on from the austerity politics that defined the Republican Party from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump....

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The Politics of Student Loan Cancellation
Climate & Ecology

Why We Need to Care About Animal Ethics in a Time When Humans Suffer Too

Alice Crary and Lori Gruen share their “critical animal theory” in a conversation with Public Seminar

September 14, 2022 • by , and
The division between “humans” and “animals” is not a natural division, but a conceptual one that privileges humans over animals, and not even all humans. This divide operates in a way that justifies the oppression of animals and humans thought to be “closer” to animals, which has often meant women, ...
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Why We Need to Care About Animal Ethics in a Time When Humans Suffer Too
Climate & Ecology

Crisis / Orangutans

A case study excerpted from Animal Crisis

September 14, 2022 • by and
From 2000 to 2015, 150,000 orangutans on Borneo died as their forest homes were destroyed and they became exposed to humans. And orangutans aren’t the only creatures to suffer from this massive destruction....

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Crisis / Orangutans
Gender

From the Vault: Labor Pains

“One classmate litigator closed up her practice, left a tape of bird songs on her office answering machine, and enrolled in art school.”

September 13, 2022 • by
Since I hadn’t been able to get Angela to talk about what trial lawyering may have done to her sense of herself, her “identity” as a woman, I shifted to a different lens: Did she feel, I asked, that the presence of more women lawyers was humanizing the criminal law?...

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From the Vault: Labor Pains
Europe & Central Asia

Different People

After fleeing war-ravaged Kharkiv, many have found refuge and hospitality in Poltava. How does it feel to be an internally displaced person in one’s own city of birth?

September 12, 2022 • by
The displaced can be recognized by their backpacks and the plastic bags they’re carrying, filled with humanitarian aid. Also, by their rapid pace. The displaced move fast: from explosion to explosion. ...

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Different People
Europe & Central Asia

Part 2: My Convictions

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

September 12, 2022 • by
Having faulted American policies myself—emphatically so from Clinton forward, when I took on that role of Boston Globe op-ed pundit—I nevertheless refused now to place blame for Putin’s war on America’s drive to protect, in the left-wing argot, its “global hegemony.”...

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Part 2: My Convictions

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