Barack Obama Archives - Public Seminar

Economy

Trump vs. the Fed

Or how history is forcing the question of a democratic politics of central banking

August 27, 2025 • by Adam Tooze

Donald Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook “for cause,” escalates his long-running battle with America’s central bank. The news has triggered outrage. In the pages of the FT, David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center for Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, warned: “President Trump seems determined to ...

Middle East & North Africa

Wars of De-Civilization

Anti-democratic regimes and the politics of annihilation

February 5, 2024 • by Hamit Bozarslan

Syria, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh and now Gaza: connecting all recent wars is disregard for national sovereignty as recognised by international law....

Migration

The Violence of American Border Policies Continues

Both political parties say they care about families—so why would the Biden administration return to a family separation regime?

April 19, 2023 • by Rachel Ida Buff

And yet, in the absence of new legislation that makes it easier to cross the border legally for work, the Biden administration has defaulted to a hard line on immigration that continues to separate families and promote border security. ...

The Violence of American Border Policies Continues

Europe & Central Asia

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

The renewed threat of nuclear war—and the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety

October 25, 2022 • by James Carroll and Robert Jay Lifton

Nuclear complacency is multifaceted. A certain amount of nuclear fear is appropriate to our situation. When we give in to what you’re calling nuclear complacency, it’s because we have insufficient fear of what is actually dangerous....

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

Education

Leading While Black

An introduction to the special issue, “Teaching While Black”

April 28, 2022 • by Dwight A. McBride

Indeed, the sad truth is that many of the slights, insults, and aggressions experienced by the dedicated teachers collected here (I don’t think of the casual ugliness which many of us navigate as “micro-aggressions”) are duplicated within higher education’s administrative spaces....

Activism

We Are a Reckoning

Deva Woodly introduces her new book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements

January 17, 2022 • by Deva Woodly

This nation is mine. Mine to claim. Mine to hold to account. Mine to participate in reshaping. So I tell an American story because it is my story to tell....

Democracy

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

December 8, 2021 • by Gregory Coleman, Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

Award-winning historians Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston spoke (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss their new book Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Edited by Nichols and Preston with fellow historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the collection of curated essays discusses what American grand strategy ...

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

Activism

Statement about Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict

A letter from the president of The New School

November 22, 2021 • by Dwight A. McBride

Dear New School students and colleagues, I want to take a moment to respond to the verdict that was delivered last Friday afternoon in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, wherein Mr. Rittenhouse was found to be not guilty on all counts. I have heard from many individuals in The New School community ...

Statement about Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict

Constitutional Politics

Why Americans Worship the Constitution

October 11, 2021 • by Aziz Rana

In the last two centuries, 220 countries have appeared on the global stage and, between them, they have produced a remarkable 900 written constitutions. The sheer numbers are telling: For the most part, societies treat their constitutions instrumentally. When these legal-political orders break down or social upheaval brings new elites and alliances ...

Politics

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Is there incentive to attack the court’s legitimacy?

September 28, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Last week, opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote about the sinking reputation of the United States Supreme Court. With respect to a new abortion law in Texas, which invalidates Roe v. Wade, the Post columnist said that, “The nub of the problem is not that (or not only that) voters are angry that the court allowed ...

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Uncategorized

Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties

Will admitting a “tragic mistake” change the way we wage war?

September 21, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

Last Friday, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie of U.S. Central Command admitted that the August 29 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that the U.S. had claimed hit ISIS-K fighters had instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children. This “tragic mistake,” as he called it, at the very end of the ...

Capitalism

Why Business Depends on Big Government

The economy was meant to be underwritten by tax dollars—but Americans don’t want to know that

October 20, 2020 • by Lawrence Glickman

————— One of the most telling statements of our political era was made by Republican Dick Cheney in a Vice Presidential debate with Democrat Joe Lieberman on October 5, 2000, 20 years ago this month. Lieberman jibed that Cheney, the Republican nominee, had profited handsomely from the job he had recently ...

Barack Obama

Trump vs. the Fed

Or how history is forcing the question of a democratic politics of central banking

Wars of De-Civilization

Anti-democratic regimes and the politics of annihilation

The Violence of American Border Policies Continues

Both political parties say they care about families—so why would the Biden administration return to a family separation regime?

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

The renewed threat of nuclear war—and the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety

Leading While Black

An introduction to the special issue, “Teaching While Black”

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Why Americans Worship the Constitution

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Is there incentive to attack the court’s legitimacy?

Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties

Will admitting a “tragic mistake” change the way we wage war?

Why Business Depends on Big Government

The economy was meant to be underwritten by tax dollars—but Americans don’t want to know that

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