Essays Archive - Page 78 of 131

From Mafia State to ”Parish” Republic

August 5, 2020 • by Michal Vašečka

Slovakia is a rather unique case within post-1989 Central Europe as far as democratic transition is concerned. The lack of a tradition of statehood is the most evident difference between Slovaks and the other nations of Central Europe. It is necessary to keep this fact in mind when examining the ...

Democracy

We’re All in the Same Boat: A Democracy Seminar Update

August 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As I wrote over two years ago, when our current group first began to take shape, this is the second iteration of the Democracy Seminar. The first was an exchange between critical democrats in the United States and Central Europe in the late nineteen eighties and early nineties. The contrast ...

We’re All in the Same Boat: A Democracy Seminar Update

Literature

Re-reading C. P. Snow

What the mid-century novelist and man of letters understood about being human in an uncertain world

July 30, 2020 • by Anthony Grafton

Rather like the legendary couple of whom someone, struggling to understand their mutual attraction, cracked, “Well, they are both carbon-based life forms,” these books seem pretty disparate. But all of them help me find calm at night, particularly now, when the shadows gather and the future looks even darker than ...

Activism

“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

For a physician who supported armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, a commitment to radical anti-racism was everything

July 30, 2020 • by Susan M. Reverby

But what kind of action? There have always been Americans who could imagine a world of racial equality and justice, and who worked in cross-racial alliances to make it happen, not just -- as we do today -- at a street protest, or by issuing heartfelt statements of support, or ...

“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

Film & Performing Arts

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

The pandemic has interrupted business as usual — but that might be good for your creativity

July 30, 2020 • by Dawnja Burris

But the pandemic changed that. Making a short film without being able to be on location, without a crew, and being physically distanced from subjects is exactly what many film students experienced this past spring semester when their classes were moved online because of COVID-19. Films that had been carefully ...

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

Higher Ed

Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias

College and university presidents should have the courage to halt their reopening

July 30, 2020 • by Eileen Hunt Botting

In late May, the President of Notre Dame and Thomist philosopher Fr. John I. Jenkins defended his decision to reopen its campus in terms of the university’s religious and moral values, including the virtue of having soldierly “courage” in the face of death. This, he insisted, was a virtuous Aristotelian “mean” between ...

Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias

History

Let’s Build a Monument to Anastácia

An enslaved woman’s image that has traveled around the hemisphere can help us rethink slavery and memorialization

July 30, 2020 • by Marc Hertzman and Giovana Xavier

In May 2020, as the social movement to remove racist monuments grew and the COVID-19 pandemic spiraled out of control, two white women protesting against social distancing and masks were photographed with a sign. It read: “Muzzles are for dogs and slaves. I am a free human being.” It featured ...

Economy

Where Is the Risk in the COVID Economy?

A look at shadow banking

July 30, 2020 • by Janet Roitman and Andrew Moon

We are witnessing a public bailout of the private sector that dwarfs the bailout response to the 2007–2008 Great Recession. Compared to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) implemented in 2008, today’s mobilization of public funds through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act amounts to ...

Education

The Enigma of Rescue

On a recent history of The New School for Social Research

July 30, 2020 • by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft

The New School for Social Research holds a story of rescue dear. This is the tale of how its co-founder and first president, the economist Alvin Johnson, climbed a mountain of correspondence and paperwork to save scores of German scholars after Nazism’s rise to power in the early 1930s. Johnson ...

History

The Case of the Hijacked Statue of the Great Abolitionist

What the fate of the monument to Edward Coles in Edwardsville, Illinois, can tell us about the ironies of hoping that statues might tell a new American story

July 29, 2020 • by Jeffrey Manuel

Recently, renewed efforts have been made to diversify the kinds of Americans commemorated by public monuments. A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an op-ed by David Blight, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographer of Frederick Douglass; as the title of the piece put it, “There’s a Chance to Tell a ...

The Case of the Hijacked Statue of the Great Abolitionist

Politics

Are Americans Rethinking Who They Are?

“Consumers” and “taxpayers” can’t save a republic

July 28, 2020 • by John Stoehr

This is bad policy and bad politics, as my friend Marty Longman wrote last week. Two hundred bucks weekly is better than a payroll tax cut. No one would see that (especially if they’re unemployed). But people would see less money coming in amid a pandemic, recession, and housing crisis just ...

Economy

Even If Joe Biden Wins in a Blowout, the ‘Global Economy’ Is Not Coming Back

July 27, 2020 • by Marshall Auerback

Many will regard these developments as chiefly driven by geopolitical prerogatives. But over time, the driving engine of the process will be a combination of maturing technologies that are rewriting the laws of profitability in manufacturing and production for advanced economies. The various capacities that enabled a far-flung global supply ...

Essays

From Mafia State to ”Parish” Republic

We’re All in the Same Boat: A Democracy Seminar Update

Re-reading C. P. Snow

What the mid-century novelist and man of letters understood about being human in an uncertain world

“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

For a physician who supported armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, a commitment to radical anti-racism was everything

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

The pandemic has interrupted business as usual — but that might be good for your creativity

Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias

College and university presidents should have the courage to halt their reopening

Let’s Build a Monument to Anastácia

An enslaved woman’s image that has traveled around the hemisphere can help us rethink slavery and memorialization

Where Is the Risk in the COVID Economy?

A look at shadow banking

The Enigma of Rescue

On a recent history of The New School for Social Research

The Case of the Hijacked Statue of the Great Abolitionist

What the fate of the monument to Edward Coles in Edwardsville, Illinois, can tell us about the ironies of hoping that statues might tell a new American story

Are Americans Rethinking Who They Are?

“Consumers” and “taxpayers” can’t save a republic

Even If Joe Biden Wins in a Blowout, the ‘Global Economy’ Is Not Coming Back

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