Essays Archive - Page 42 of 131

Car Alarm in Oklahoma

Driving through an absurd incentive cover-up

July 7, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ Canoo — a company that makes not boats, but electric cars — announced earlier this month that it will open a new plant in Pryor, Oklahoma. Oklahoma was in the hunt for a Tesla plant that wound up in Austin, Texas, so officials there are spinning this as a very ...

Democracy

What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

July 7, 2021 • by Zeyno Ustun

_____ In the summer of 2013, I was about to start my graduate degree at The New School for Social Research. A month before I sat in Jeff Goldfarb’s contemporary sociology class, I was in Istanbul—protesting, resisting, and critically thinking with many others about our collective actions, media activism, and the ...

Democracy

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Jeff Goldfarb navigated–and worked through–the polar opposites that can define academic and political life

July 7, 2021 • by Irit Dekel

_____ Jeff Goldfarb has been my teacher, colleague, and friend: our conversations about culture, politics, democracy, and activism—through reading and writing, in public and private forums—have continued since I began as a student in the Department of Sociology at the NSSR. From and with Jeff, and by studying sites within which democracy ...

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Democracy

A Connection That Never Expired

In 1974, Jeffrey Goldfarb went to Poland to do research about democracy—and put down lasting roots

July 7, 2021 • by Elzbieta Matynia and Claire Potter

Claire Potter: Elzbieta, let's begin with when you met Jeff Goldfarb. Elzbieta Matynia: Jeff and Naomi Goldfarb came to Poland in 1973—Jeff was on an IREX fellowship, and Naomi attended some studio classes at the Academy of Arts. I had just begun my graduate studies. But we were both interested in the same ...

A Scholar for Our Times

Friendship and the substance of hope

July 7, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

_____ “’two going together’ are better able both to think and to act.” —Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapter I, on friendship. I was just starting to wind down my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives on Politics when I had my first actual conversation with Jeff Goldfarb. I had just published a lead ...

Feature

My Arrest in Poland

The authorities hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance

July 7, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

_____ “At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what ...

Activism

Time’s Up for Fossil Fuels

A photo essay

July 2, 2021 • by Jo Freeman

Roughly 100 people got up very early on a very hot day to demonstrate against the use of fossil fuels. Mary Crow led everyone in prayer on DC’s Freedom Plaza around 7:30 a.m. Leaving a little after 8:00 a.m., different groups walked to five different locations around the ellipse and ...

The Right

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

France’s culture wars are being fanned by a racism that cannot be discussed in public—but that followers of Marine Le Pen understand all the same

June 30, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

_____ French President Emmanuel Macron was greeted at a recent press event with a slap in the face. Damien T., the man who delivered the slap, was heard yelling “Montjoie! Saint-Denis!” and “A bas la macronie” the former being a Royalist battle cry, the latter translating as “Down with Macronism!” The reason ...

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

Columnists

Remembering Gay Activist Vito Russo

Long before LGBT Pride was all rainbows, sunshine, and corporate dollars, this film critic and journalist typified what it meant to be a radical queer intellectual

June 30, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ It is June 28, the actual anniversary of New York City’s Stonewall Rebellion, and we are (thank the goddess) nearing the end of Pride Month. June is a pseudo-sacred time of year for queers and those who make money from us. Major cities and resort towns worldwide have been mounting parades, hanging colorful flags, ...

The Right

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Where were conservatives when theories justifying white racial supremacy propped up slavery, imperialism and genocide?

June 30, 2021 • by Russ Castronovo

_____ Following a script being used in at least 16 other states, lawmakers in my home state of Wisconsin are taking aim at “critical race theory.” The proposed GOP legislation would ban anyone teaching in a public classroom, from kindergarten to college from promoting the notion that “any race is superior ...

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Columnists

Does Being a Billionaire Mean Being a Liar?

ProPublica has tax returns suggesting an answer

June 30, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ ProPublica is doing the Lord’s work. Specifically, investigative reporters Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen, and Paul Kiel are doing it. Two weeks ago, the nonprofit news group published the first in a planned series of pieces revealing, in exquisite detail, the moral character of the very obscenely rich. The series will ...

Does Being a Billionaire Mean Being a Liar?

The Right

Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

A visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky shows how deeply rooted distrust in science is now embedded in the culture of white evangelicals

June 30, 2021 • by Chelsea Ebin

_____ Following Liz Cheney’s ouster from the GOP House leadership, there have been murmurings among some Republicans about starting a break-away party committed to upholding traditional conservative policies rather than defending Donald Trump’s false assertion that he, not Joe Biden, is in fact the duly elected President of the United States. ...

Essays

Car Alarm in Oklahoma

Driving through an absurd incentive cover-up

What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Jeff Goldfarb navigated–and worked through–the polar opposites that can define academic and political life

A Connection That Never Expired

In 1974, Jeffrey Goldfarb went to Poland to do research about democracy—and put down lasting roots

A Scholar for Our Times

Friendship and the substance of hope

My Arrest in Poland

The authorities hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance

Time’s Up for Fossil Fuels

A photo essay

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

France’s culture wars are being fanned by a racism that cannot be discussed in public—but that followers of Marine Le Pen understand all the same

Remembering Gay Activist Vito Russo

Long before LGBT Pride was all rainbows, sunshine, and corporate dollars, this film critic and journalist typified what it meant to be a radical queer intellectual

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Where were conservatives when theories justifying white racial supremacy propped up slavery, imperialism and genocide?

Does Being a Billionaire Mean Being a Liar?

ProPublica has tax returns suggesting an answer

Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

A visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky shows how deeply rooted distrust in science is now embedded in the culture of white evangelicals

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