Jeffrey Goldfarb Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Resisting Cynicism and Neototalitarianism

The ideological dogmatism of left and right might dissipate within a radical center that is open and inclusive

May 28, 2026 • by Siobhan Kattago

As part of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy, Gray Is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center, Siobhan Kattago opens up another window on the concept of the radical center, noting that while the term “radical center” may sound like a ...

Resisting Cynicism and Neototalitarianism

Democracy

Thoughts on “the Radical Center” and the Defense of Democracy

On the limits of the limits of either/or thinking

May 28, 2026 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

As part of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy, Gray Is Beautiful: Confronting the Retreat of Democracy from the Radical Center, Jeffrey C. Isaac suggests that this “paradoxical idea” (paradoxical, for how can “radicalism” be “centrist?”) is best defended by Goldfarb himself but that ...

Democracy

Understanding the Retreat of Democracy With Jeff Goldfarb’s Gray Is Beautiful

On creating a free space of exploration

May 27, 2026 • by Irit Dekel

As part of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy, series editor Irit Dekel reflects on how the book’s subtitle, Confronting the Retreat of Democracy From the Radical Center, poses the potent tensions that are crucial for attempting to solve the problems at hand, suggesting that ...

Understanding the Retreat of Democracy With Jeff Goldfarb’s Gray Is Beautiful

The New School

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

August 23, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

_____ 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 ...

Democracy

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

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

July 7, 2021 • by Irit Dekel

_____ 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 ...

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

A Scholar for Our Times

Friendship and the substance of hope

July 7, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

_____ “’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 ...

Migration

‘The Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’

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

October 19, 2020 • by Marci Shore, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Vera I. Grant, Dan H. Shore, Tyrone Chambers, II and Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

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 ...

‘The Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’

Feature

Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!

On the Ideological Character of Liberalism & Socialism

May 14, 2019 • by Bryant William Sculos

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 ...

Middle East & North Africa

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The resiliency of Erdogan and the AKP

March 27, 2018 • by Can Mert Kökerer

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 ...

Feature

Democratic Crisis and the Politics of Social Media

Claire Potter on her upcoming Democracy & Diversity Institute course

March 25, 2018 • by TCDS

“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 ...

Democratic Crisis and the Politics of Social Media

Philosophy

Philosophers on Fake News

Arendt and Foucault on power and truth in media politics

March 19, 2018 • by Haeun Kim

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 ...

Education

Myths on the Body

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

July 24, 2017 • by Ali Shames-Dawson

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 ...