Essays Archive - Page 50 of 131

The New Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in New York

The limits of monuments in public remembrance

April 27, 2021 • by Silvana Alvarez Basto

The tensions between public monuments and history frequently orbit the question of “historical faithfulness” or “accuracy.” The controversy surrounding the new women’s rights monument in Central Park is an example of these tensions. Sculpted by Meredith Bergmann, the monument represents suffragettes Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. ...

The New Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in New York

Migration

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

A conversation between Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Dwayne Betts

April 22, 2021 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Marci Shore

Marci: As you know, the original impetus for this forum was horror of the children being taken away from their parents at the American border, and my saying to Stephen Naron that we should use material from the Fortunoff archive to prepare a film about parent-child separation during the Holocaust. ...

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

Activism

Teaching Through the Pandemic

In a course about memorializing HIV-AIDS, students learned about community by making one

April 21, 2021 • by Dan Royles

_____ Everyone involved in education has found the past year to be a special challenge for teaching, learning, and simply making it from one day to another. But how do you teach students about a pandemic during a pandemic? In December 2020, queer historian Dan Royles interviewed Theodore (Ted) Kerr and his ...

Race

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

At last, a policeman is held accountable for murdering a Black American. But the process of imagining an end to lethal policing has only begun

April 21, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ My greatest fear as I waited for the verdict in the George Floyd case yesterday was not that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin wasn’t going to be convicted of something. The prosecution had carefully left two back doors open for the jury, alternative charges that would have allowed the ...

History

Promise and Peril: Mass Vaccination in Colonial Africa

How a yellow fever vaccine in French West Africa may have killed thousands

April 21, 2021 • by Aro Velmet

_____ In 1944, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) mandated that all travelers arriving in regions where yellow fever was endemic should be inoculated against the disease. Two immunization options were on offer: a vaccine developed by the American Rockefeller Foundation, known as 17-D, or one with a ”French ...

Promise and Peril: Mass Vaccination in Colonial Africa

Uncategorized

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

Democracy

Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

But gun ownership only became popular after World War II, when conservatives united to prevent desegregation

April 21, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ America today is caught in a plague of gun violence. It wasn’t always this way. Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. Indeed, it always jumps out at me that the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, when members of one Chicago gang set up and killed ...

Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

Uncategorized

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 ...

Politics

Congress’s Incentive Cease-Fire

How a COVID relief bill could temporarily slow the tax break race to the bottom

April 21, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ Though corporate tax giveaway problems often arise at the state and local level, federal lawmakers could technically implement a fix for the whole nation. For decades, in fact, a few policymakers have pushed for Congress to use its power to regulate interstate commerce to end the race to the bottom ...

Columnists

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Claims that children are being harmed are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don’t have to feel bad about racism

April 20, 2021 • by Claire Potter

Late last week, Paul Rossi, a member of the mathematics faculty at Grace Church School in lower Manhattan, denounced the social justice and anti-racism program instituted by the school in 2020. Before writing this essay, published on Bari Weiss’s contrarian Substack, Common Sense, Rossi was already in hot water. By ...

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Capitalism

Up To Heaven and Down to Hell

Fracking, freedom, and community in an American town

April 20, 2021 • by Colin Jerolmack

_____ The following excerpt is from Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town by Colin Jerolmack and was reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press. From page 229, Fig. 10.3b. Fracking in the Tiadaghton State Forest. Photograph ...

Capitalism

Data Cooperatives for Pandemic Times

To avoid ‘co-op whitewashing,’ experiments with data co-ops should be co-developed with communities connected to the long history and analysis of the various forms of cooperatives.

April 19, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz and Igor Calzada

To avoid 'co-op whitewashing,' data cooperatives must be shaped by those who need them most, rooted in cooperative principles and localized data....

Essays

The New Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in New York

The limits of monuments in public remembrance

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

A conversation between Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Dwayne Betts

Teaching Through the Pandemic

In a course about memorializing HIV-AIDS, students learned about community by making one

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

At last, a policeman is held accountable for murdering a Black American. But the process of imagining an end to lethal policing has only begun

Promise and Peril: Mass Vaccination in Colonial Africa

How a yellow fever vaccine in French West Africa may have killed thousands

Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

But gun ownership only became popular after World War II, when conservatives united to prevent desegregation

Vietnamese in America

A cross generational conversation about culture and identity

Congress’s Incentive Cease-Fire

How a COVID relief bill could temporarily slow the tax break race to the bottom

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Claims that children are being harmed are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don’t have to feel bad about racism

Up To Heaven and Down to Hell

Fracking, freedom, and community in an American town

Data Cooperatives for Pandemic Times

To avoid ‘co-op whitewashing,’ experiments with data co-ops should be co-developed with communities connected to the long history and analysis of the various forms of cooperatives.

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