Remembering Michael E. Gellert

Not just a benefactor but a friend, this émigré from Central European knew that the act of listening was the future of democracy

_____ One of the great honors of my life was to be named the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology in May of 1999. At the time, I was very pleased because it recognized the value of my scholarship, teaching and service to the New School and the broader public. But ...
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Remembering Michael E. Gellert

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Jeff Goldfarb navigated–and worked through–the polar opposites that can define academic and political life

_____ Jeff Goldfarb has been my teacher, colleague, and friend: our conversations about culture, politics, democracy, and activism—through reading and writing, in public and private forums—have continued since I began as a student in the Department of Sociology at the NSSR. From and with Jeff, and by studying sites within which democracy ...
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Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

A Scholar for Our Times

Friendship and the substance of hope

_____ “’two going together’ are better able both to think and to act.” —Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapter I, on friendship. I was just starting to wind down my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives on Politics when I had my first actual conversation with Jeff Goldfarb. I had just published a lead ...
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A Scholar for Our Times

‘The Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’

Tyrone Chambers, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Vera Grant, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Dan Shore, Marci Shore

Edited and abridged by Marci Shore KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI: I’m here in Krasnogruda. It means at the border between Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, in the northeastern corner of Poland. In my Borderland Centre, which, with my friends, I established 30 years ago, thinking of being more engaged in art, for solidarity with ...
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‘The Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’

Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!

On the Ideological Character of Liberalism & Socialism

Something in the Night is Dangerous According to Jeffrey Goldfarb, founder and publisher of Public Seminar (PS), I am dangerous. I threaten to undermine democracy. While Goldfarb’s comments may not have been specifically targeted at me, they are targeted at the kind of socialist critical theory and practice for which I often argue (for just ...
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Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The resiliency of Erdogan and the AKP

This is an attempt to tell and explain the “success” story of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its founder Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current President of the Republic of Turkey. They came to power in 2002, following economic and political crises in the previous decade. The party and ...
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Populism Through Uprooted Truths

Democratic Crisis and the Politics of Social Media

Claire Potter on her upcoming Democracy & Diversity Institute course

“One of the things that’s so interesting about Democracy and social media today is that it’s a paradox… I think all the possibilities for social media being a democratic space are still there, but recent history suggests that social media has also been complicit in foreclosing Democracy, not just in ...
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Democratic Crisis and the Politics of Social Media

Philosophers on Fake News

Arendt and Foucault on power and truth in media politics

Despite their irrefutable and continued presence in the world today, for some time the practices of banning and censorship have struck me as antiquated, almost quaint, like a desperate but not wholly effective grasp for control by a declining State. My admission of this admittedly unsubstantiated and impressionistic outlook—although not ...
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Philosophers on Fake News

Myths on the Body

What Candice Jackson would know about sexual consent if she read the research

The recent  Title IX Listening Sessions of July 13 2017 sponsored by U. S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has prompted this week's forum at Public Seminar. As part of the process, Secretary DeVos also hosted men's rights activists who champion the cause of individuals claiming to be falsely ...
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Myths on the Body

On Theorizing Neoliberalism

The Problems and Politics of a Critique

In a recent piece for Public Seminar, Jeffery Goldfarb explores the problems of the term and concept of neoliberalism, specifically its inconsistent application by those on the left. He claims that neoliberalism is used to describe a wide range of policy positions from public-private ventures up to the complete deregulation of ...
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On Theorizing Neoliberalism

General Seminar

The 2016 US Presidential Election

Julia Ott, History: How Historic Is this Election? Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, History: Beyond Nasty: The Woman Problem and Election 2016 Deva Woodly, Politics: Parallel Politics: Electoral Politics and the Movement for Black Lives David Plotke, Politics: Trump’s New Right/Left Campaign Jeffrey Goldfarb, Sociology: The Promise and Perils ...
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Paris Terror Events and the Dramaturgies of the Aftermath

Daniel Dayan is a fellow of the Marcel Mauss Institute (School of Advanced Study in the Social Sciences) and a professor at the Levinas European Institute. Dayan has been Research director at CNRS-Paris, and a visiting professor at Sciences-Po and the universities of Stanford, Geneva, Tel Aviv, and Oslo. He has also been an Annenberg scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and for many years a ...
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