Jeffrey C. Isaac Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

Voting While Uncommitted

Sustained collective action is not incompatible with the singular act of voting

October 31, 2024 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I have never subscribed to the idea that citizens who refuse to vote for a Democratic candidate in a tight race are somehow morally responsible for the election of a Republican, however bad that Republican might be. If we are serious about liberal democracy, then we must recognize that every citizen ...

Activism

Reflections on the War between Israel and Hamas

Voices of sanity are in danger of being drowned out by the rhetoricians of all-out war

October 16, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

For a long time many civilians, Israeli and Palestinian, have suffered, as their leaders have failed to bring about a civil, peaceful, and at least modestly just end to a long and violent conflict. I feel for them all, and particularly for the children who have grown up knowing nothing ...

Reflections on the War between Israel and Hamas

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

Feature

A Public Seminar Happy New Year?

Reflections between hope and despair, with musical accompaniment

January 4, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I wanted to declare, without hesitation: Happy New Year! But I couldn’t, as New Year’s celebrations passed. I fear a very unhappy one, with more of what we have been experiencing. Democracy, free speech, academic freedom, human rights, and the movements for class, gender, sexual, and racial justice are all ...

Democracy

The Radical Center as a Utopian Project?

7 notes on the ideal of a free, intelligent and consequential public life

October 12, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

1. From a critical point of view, “the center” is the ground of the wishy washy: too attached to the ways things are to commit to the radical change of the left, not sufficiently informed by the wisdom of customs and traditional values to fully embrace the good of the ...

The Radical Center as a Utopian Project?

Feature

#AgainstTrump

A re-invitation to read Jeffrey C. Isaac’s Notes from Year One

June 8, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

With the Donald Trump now virtually declaring, “L'Etat, c'est moi,” in his attempts to avoid possible indictment, I can think of no better time than now to highlight Public Seminar’s second book, Jeffrey C. Isaac’s brilliant #AgainstTrump: Notes From Year One (for a free download click here). The book was officially published to coincide with Adam Michnik’s visit ...

Feature

Gray Memory

On a Self-limiting Collective Imagination

April 13, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” So wrote Milan Kundera. Years ago, I found in his bold assertion confirmation of the findings of my first major research project on the sociological dynamics of cultural freedom. I would like to think my study of ...

Feature

Loving a Military Parade and Clapping for the Great Leader

On Post Truth Authoritarianism and Resistance

February 9, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Donald Trump is truly a path breaking leader, opening new horizons for the American Republic. This week, he introduced into the American public life the idea of military parade in Washington D.C. and “joked” that those who do not clap for the great leader commit treason. Both truly unprecedented “advances,” ...

Loving a Military Parade and Clapping for the Great Leader

Feature

A Post on Friendship, Love and Power

On the Power of the Powerless in Dark Times

February 2, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“There are a great many things which cannot withstand the implacable, bright light of the constant presence of others on the public scene; there, only what is considered to be relevant, worthy of being seen and heard, can be tolerated…there are very relevant matters which can survive only in the ...

Feature

A Gray Post on a Sunny Friday Afternoon

Democracy and the Social Condition

January 26, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It’s sunny this morning here in New York. Nonetheless, from this day forward, and retroactively, I am going to label my weekly posts “Gray Friday.” I am doing so because all of my posts have been informed by my appreciation of the beauty of the gray, and because I see ...

Feature

Happy New Year!

A Note from the “Publisher”

December 29, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

A.G. Sulzberger became the publisher of The New York Times this month, as I became the publisher of Public Seminar. I find this coincidence pretty funny, though perhaps you have to be me to get the joke. The Times is a great institution, though ultimately just a family business. “A.G.” is ...

Feature

Jeffrey C. Isaac, John McCain and Me

Thinking about a Democratic Antifa

October 27, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Isaac documents the danger that is White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. General Kelley’s disciplined authoritarianism may be more “adult” than that of his boss. Yet, as Isaac observes, it is enabling and not controlling the threat Trump presents to American democracy. Analyzing the interactive context of Trump’s telephone conversation with ...