Kamala Harris Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

An Open Letter to Kamala Harris

When silence is not an option

February 13, 2025 • by Melvin L. Rogers

On the final night of the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, Vice President Harris delivered what was meant to be a defining speech of her career. Accepting her party’s nomination, she did more than make the case for her presidency—she sounded the alarm. “With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting ...

Democracy

Trump Returns

Anyone who knows what will happen in 2028 probably doesn’t know much

February 6, 2025 • by David Plotke

The following remarks were first presented on November 13, 2024, in a public lecture at the New School for Social Research. Donald Trump’s substantial victory was a big deal, but not yet a full-scale political shift. Trump made a successful move in the trench warfare that now defines American politics, ...

Music

Election Anxiety Mixtape

What a Public Seminar editor is listening to in order to alleviate election dread

November 5, 2024 • by Alex Rossen

For the past year, commentators from all sectors of the American political spectrum have remarked on the impending enormity of the 2024 US presidential election. I am here not to join them but to offer a token of wellbeing. This week, Public Seminar’s editorial team is turning to music for escape, ...

Podcast

We Shall Not Be Moved

Episode 62: David Greenberg on nonviolent resistance, the legacy of an iconic civil rights organizer, and his new book, John Lewis: A Life

November 4, 2024 • by Claire Potter

There is no question that Donald Trump, a former President who is on the ballot next Tuesday, November 5, is not only a man in love with violence, but one who also understands violence as a way to get what he wants. On May 1, 1989, Trump took out a ...

North America

Trump’s Charm Offensive

“You guys are the same as me”

November 1, 2024 • by Adam Koehler Brown

A #1 with a large fry, made and served by the forty-fifth president of the United States: Donald Trump was working a drive-through at a McDonald’s last weekend in Pennsylvania. He salted fries and greeted customers, a stunt meant to mock Kamala Harris and her repeated claim to have worked ...

Activism

The “Prose of Counterinsurgency”

Policing, migration, militarization, and the liberal-democratic provocation of the fascist turn in the Republican Party

November 1, 2024 • by James Porter

What Ranajit Guha has called the “prose of counterinsurgency” surely comes closest to characterizing the current state of abolitionist struggles within the context of the US presidential election campaign. With this concept, the postcolonial historian describes the strategies by which uprisings against imperial forms of domination have been degraded as ...

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 ...

Migration

Immigration and the US Presidential Election

A conversation on the US-Mexico border, inflammatory rhetoric, and policies that can serve migrants and citizens alike

October 30, 2024 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Alexandra Délano Alonso

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have emphasized US-Mexico border security as one of the top concerns of their 2024 presidential campaigns. Why? In a conversation hosted by the New School for Social Research, Eugene Lang College, and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, politics and global studies professor ...

Immigration and the US Presidential Election

Activism

What Democrats Lose in Ignoring the Uncommitted Movement

The party has learned the wrong lessons from 1968

October 24, 2024 • by Abby Lloyd

In anticipation of the Uncommitted National Movement’s arrival at this summer’s Democratic National Convention, press and political commentators made frequent reference to the anti-war protests turned police riots of the 1968 convention. It had been more than 50 years since internal discord among Democrats had been organized into an electoral ...

What Democrats Lose in Ignoring the Uncommitted Movement

Capitalism

Behind the Balancing Act of Kamala Harris’s Industrial Policy

What should Kamala Harris learn from the complicated history of post-1970s New Liberals

October 21, 2024 • by Henry Tonks

Breaking with the strategic ambiguity of her presidential campaign’s early months, Vice President Kamala Harris served up a clearer distillation of her economic agenda in a speech to the Economic Club of Pittsburgh on September 25. The speech was fêted as Harris’s “pragmatic,” “moderate-friendly” pitch. Harris also, however, pointed to ...

Behind the Balancing Act of Kamala Harris’s Industrial Policy

North America

When Politicians Make Nice

A conversation with sociologist Julia Sonnevend about her new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics

September 11, 2024 • by Claire Potter and Julia Sonnevend

When United States president Joe Biden stumbled on the debate stage on June 27, 2024, it wasn’t that he just seemed old, it was that a man who had charmed voters for half a century with his bright smile, kindness, and folksy quips seemed to have vanished. ...

Podcast

Nobody Else Has My Eyes

Episode 53: A conversation with Nell Irvin Painter about her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays

April 30, 2024 • by Claire Potter

Episode 53: A conversation with Nell Irvin Painter about her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays...

Kamala Harris

An Open Letter to Kamala Harris

When silence is not an option

Trump Returns

Anyone who knows what will happen in 2028 probably doesn’t know much

Election Anxiety Mixtape

What a Public Seminar editor is listening to in order to alleviate election dread

We Shall Not Be Moved

Episode 62: David Greenberg on nonviolent resistance, the legacy of an iconic civil rights organizer, and his new book, John Lewis: A Life

Trump’s Charm Offensive

“You guys are the same as me”

The “Prose of Counterinsurgency”

Policing, migration, militarization, and the liberal-democratic provocation of the fascist turn in the Republican Party

Voting While Uncommitted

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

Immigration and the US Presidential Election

A conversation on the US-Mexico border, inflammatory rhetoric, and policies that can serve migrants and citizens alike

What Democrats Lose in Ignoring the Uncommitted Movement

The party has learned the wrong lessons from 1968

Behind the Balancing Act of Kamala Harris’s Industrial Policy

What should Kamala Harris learn from the complicated history of post-1970s New Liberals

When Politicians Make Nice

A conversation with sociologist Julia Sonnevend about her new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics

Nobody Else Has My Eyes

Episode 53: A conversation with Nell Irvin Painter about her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays

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