Essays Archive - Page 91 of 131

There is No Future without Openness to the Other

To think the future in a time of pandemic, what do we require?

May 14, 2020 • by Lucas Fain

To speak of the void is to recall something of the timeless: that which does not dissipate, but which persists through the perpetuation of a lack, the endurance of a pressure that withstands no relief. The void, as a kind of pressure, pregnant with demand, is the source of a drive: a drive which ...

There is No Future without Openness to the Other

Higher Ed

Brave New Classroom

Lessons from the first six weeks

May 13, 2020 • by Hannah Leffingwell

What felt at the time like the worst-case scenario has now become our “new normal.” Emails warn of budget catastrophes, lost tuition, low enrollment. Amid fears that this crisis portends the end of higher education as we know it, I've started to wonder whether that is necessarily a bad thing. ...

Democracy

Who Is Trump Really Protecting During the Coronavirus Crisis?

May 12, 2020 • by Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King

Will Trump’s response to the Covid-19 crisis at last damage his claim to be his constituents’ Great Protector? The answer is not obvious. While Trump’s approval ratings first surged, then dropped, as the crisis grew, he has not fallen below where he has been through most of his term. Most ...

Who Is Trump Really Protecting During the Coronavirus Crisis?

Exiles on 12th Street

Nevertheless, She Persisted

Exiles on 12th Street, Episode Eight

May 10, 2020 • by Claire Potter

This is the eighth episode of Public Seminar’s podcast, Exiles on 12th Street. If you like it, go to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. Thanks to the bravery of several generations of activist women, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, finally granting women in the ...

Democracy

The Power and Limits of Partisanship in the Struggle to Defeat Trumpism

A Critical Response to Osita Nwanevu’s “Bipartisanship Won’t Save Us”

May 7, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

As Nwanevu nicely outlines, the “emergency” legislation recently passed by Congress through bipartisan compromise, and signed into law by President Trump, is manifestly inadequate to the current crisis. It is also the necessary and predictable result of compromises with a Republican party that opposes remedial public policy as a matter ...

The Power and Limits of Partisanship in the Struggle to Defeat Trumpism

Democracy

The GOP’s Anti-American Animus

Trump is the culmination of 40 years of sabotage.

May 7, 2020 • by John Stoehr

I suppose we should give the president a round of applause. Donald Trump has done something no Democrat (and no liberal) could have done -- demonstrate to a voting majority the anti-American animus of the “conservative” project of the last 40 years. “Anti-American” might sound strange. This is, after all, the same president who vowed in 2016 to ...

Economy

The Sesame Street Economy

What are the letters for economic health after Covid-19?

May 7, 2020 • by Janet Roitman

No matter the letter of the alphabet, there are two lessons we need to learn. The first is that growth, or ever-increasing output of goods and services, is a questionable standard to judge our economic health. We must interrogate the real value of the letters GDP. The second is that ...

History

The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longer View

Decades of bad policies brought us to this point: we need to reckon with that as a nation

May 7, 2020 • by John Ehrenreich

The highest priority is to get through the current crisis. But then we must think about what went wrong and how to forestall future crises like this. The ideas include reversing President Trump‘s decision to dismantle the federal pandemic response team, supersizing our public health corps, improving our capacity to ...

Public Health

How Dog-Whistle Racism Is Sabotaging the Postal Service

And threatening to gut the Black middle class

May 7, 2020 • by Amy Traub

Since Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress in 1775, the United States Postal Service has survived wars, depressions, natural disasters, and crises of all kinds. But it may not survive Donald Trump. The Postal Service faces a $13 billion revenue loss this fiscal year alone, as Americans send fewer letters and packages in ...

How Dog-Whistle Racism Is Sabotaging the Postal Service

Democracy

The Business of Disinformation

In Central and eastern Europe, political disinformation is highly profitable

May 7, 2020 • by Judit Szakács

Since February 2019, the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University has been mapping individuals and companies running or owning disinformation websites in five central and eastern European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. The goal is to collect data on independent (i.e. not ...

Public Health

The Job of Critical Thinking Now

Protest offers a vision of the future that refuses mere recovery

May 7, 2020 • by Joan Wallach Scott

As with those other fault-lines, the problem is not new, as François Hartog reminds us when he writes of “presentism.” Sometime in the twentieth century, we lost our belief in the redemptive power of history and so in the guarantee of a better future. Wendy Brown puts it succinctly: “We know ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 7, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin, Andrew Cole, Benjamin P. Davis, Bonnie Honig, Joy James, Mark Kingwell, Vincent Lloyd, Sarah Schulman, Dara Z. Strolovitch and Enzo Traverso

In light of Marx’s 1843 conception of critical thought, how does your perspective contribute to “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age”? In a time of social breakdown and uncertainty, we find that critique comes almost too easily. Hence we also take inspiration from the historian E. ...

Essays

There is No Future without Openness to the Other

To think the future in a time of pandemic, what do we require?

Brave New Classroom

Lessons from the first six weeks

Who Is Trump Really Protecting During the Coronavirus Crisis?

Nevertheless, She Persisted

Exiles on 12th Street, Episode Eight

The Power and Limits of Partisanship in the Struggle to Defeat Trumpism

A Critical Response to Osita Nwanevu’s “Bipartisanship Won’t Save Us”

The GOP’s Anti-American Animus

Trump is the culmination of 40 years of sabotage.

The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longer View

Decades of bad policies brought us to this point: we need to reckon with that as a nation

How Dog-Whistle Racism Is Sabotaging the Postal Service

And threatening to gut the Black middle class

The Business of Disinformation

In Central and eastern Europe, political disinformation is highly profitable

The Job of Critical Thinking Now

Protest offers a vision of the future that refuses mere recovery

Sentencing the Present

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

Newsletter

Connect With Us