Essays Archive - Page 97 of 131

Plague in the Age of Twitter

March 17, 2020 • by Eileen Sperry

COVID-19 has quickly become the outbreak of the digital era. SARS and H1N1 played out on the evening news, but this -- this is happening in real time, in piecemeal, in limited character counts. While epidemics have come and gone before, it feels unprecedented, at least in my lifetime as a 30-something, to ...

North America

The Great Immobility

March 17, 2020 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Less obvious is the lesson we could come to learn about mobility. At first glance, the restrictions on travel to the United States seem to affirm a common trope: our borders need to be sealed against immigrants who would do us harm. Build the Wall; stop the germs! But there is another ...

Activism

From Mad Cows to Coronavirus

When Government Fails, Grassroots Activism Flourishes

March 17, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

This was bad enough; but in March 1996, Britain’s secretary of state for health announced ten cases of something similar in another species: a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) had been diagnosed in human patients. CJD is a fatal disease caused by a rampant protein that eats away the brain cells ...

North America

Confessions in a Time of Plague

Or, the Virtues of Ideological Inconsistency

March 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A revised version of my doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Robert Dahl while I was a grad student at Yale, my book was titled Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist View. In it, I offered an earnest defense of neo-Marxist theories of power circa 1986 (drawing on the work of theorists such ...

Uncategorized

Violence and Redemption in Northern Ireland’s Civil War

An Interview With Patrick Radden Keefe

March 16, 2020 • by Patrick Radden Keefe and Plamena Malinova

The following interview with Patrick Radden Keefe the 2020 award winner for nonfiction, is part of a series of NBCC interviews conducted by New School creative writing students. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (PRH) traces the lives of Jean McConville, a widow with ten children ...

Violence and Redemption in Northern Ireland’s Civil War

Uncategorized

A Glimpse of Poetic Possibility

An Interview With Ben Lerner

March 14, 2020 • by Ben Lerner and Zac Ginsburg

--- Zac Ginsburg [ZG]: It is well known that The Topeka School draws from your own life. Similar to Adam Gordon, you grew up in Topeka, Kansas, your parents are psychologists, and you competed in high school debate. Adam Gordon is also the name of the protagonist in your first novel, ...

North America

COVID-19: The Fierce Urgency of Now

National political organizations need to recalibrate: this is not business as usual

March 13, 2020 • by Micah L. Sifry

Indivisible isn’t alone. The Joe Biden for President campaign is currently asking people to sign-up to knock on doors for him in Florida, Arizona, and Illinois. AccessNow, the digital rights organization, just sent me an email asking for nominations for the “Privacy Defenders and Offenders” project, with the winners of the Privacy Defender ...

New York City

The Corner Store in the Digital World

Bodega Culture’s Local Appeal and Global Reach

March 11, 2020 • by Quizayra Gonzalez

Products of the great post-World War II Puerto Rican migration to New York and the Northeast (“bodega” is a repurposing of the Spanish word for wine cellar), bodegas today reflect shifting demographic trends. Lamb over rice is on offer at my local Yemeni-owned bodega; two blocks away, I can buy ...

Literature

On The Hatred of Literature

Liberalism is about life and everything it contains

March 10, 2020 • by Jon Baskin

When I was in college, at the end of the last century, the prevailing school of literary interpretation was called “New Historicism.” The foundational assumption of this approach was that artworks were primarily of value insofar as they could offer us insight into the context and conditions of their historical ...

North America

‘Resistance’ Women Loved Elizabeth Warren. Here’s Why Their Groups Didn’t Fight for Her.

Wary of factional battles and worried about beating Trump, resistance groups withheld endorsements.

March 10, 2020 • by Lara Putnam

I know someone who has a “Nevertheless she persisted” tattoo. If you hang out with the kind of fierce, aging, progressive women who have been moving mountains since Donald Trump’s election, you probably do too. Since 2017, I have been following the new grassroots democracy groups that popped up like wildfire across the country ...

‘Resistance’ Women Loved Elizabeth Warren. Here’s Why Their Groups Didn’t Fight for Her.

Politics

Will We Ever Elect a Professor President?

March 10, 2020 • by David Perlmutter

So, like a lot of professors’ children, I vowed in my youth never to become a professor. You may notice from my byline that I am a professor. Unlike a much more common popular culture character -- the K–12 teacher who can be crazy, good, or bad -- the popular culture stereotype of ...

Will We Ever Elect a Professor President?

North America

The Frustration of Being Elizabeth Warren

The significance of a campaign that couldn’t get a look from the voters

March 10, 2020 • by Miranda Yaver

It is a familiar story, and one that frustrates many close followers of Democratic Party politics. The field has narrowed from a diverse array of candidates spanning different races, genders, ages, and sexual orientations, to two familiar white men who seek to unseat the current president. Warren’s departure from the field ...

Essays

Plague in the Age of Twitter

The Great Immobility

From Mad Cows to Coronavirus

When Government Fails, Grassroots Activism Flourishes

Confessions in a Time of Plague

Or, the Virtues of Ideological Inconsistency

Violence and Redemption in Northern Ireland’s Civil War

An Interview With Patrick Radden Keefe

A Glimpse of Poetic Possibility

An Interview With Ben Lerner

COVID-19: The Fierce Urgency of Now

National political organizations need to recalibrate: this is not business as usual

The Corner Store in the Digital World

Bodega Culture’s Local Appeal and Global Reach

On The Hatred of Literature

Liberalism is about life and everything it contains

‘Resistance’ Women Loved Elizabeth Warren. Here’s Why Their Groups Didn’t Fight for Her.

Wary of factional battles and worried about beating Trump, resistance groups withheld endorsements.

Will We Ever Elect a Professor President?

The Frustration of Being Elizabeth Warren

The significance of a campaign that couldn’t get a look from the voters

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