Lionel Trilling Archives - Public Seminar

Higher Ed

The Burned-Over District: The Horses of Instruction and the Tygers of Wrath

Must the university resign itself to the fact that the liberal ethos at the heart of intellectual inquiry rarely informs our political convictions?

September 11, 2025 • by Jonathan Veitch

Genocide; Zionism; antisemitism; settler colonialism; structural racism; apartheid. "Divest now!"; "Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets too!"; "Anyone who sympathizes with Hamas is an antisemite"; "Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas's fight"; "Globalize the intifada"; "Using Gazans as a human shield is a war crime"; "From the ...

On The Hatred of Literature

Liberalism is about life and everything it contains

March 10, 2020 • by Jon Baskin

When I was in college, at the end of the last century, the prevailing school of literary interpretation was called “New Historicism.” The foundational assumption of this approach was that artworks were primarily of value insofar as they could offer us insight into the context and conditions of their historical ...

Authenticity, American Style

The meaning of authenticity in the era of “reality show” politics

March 23, 2018 • by Jeremy Safran

In her 2012 book The Politics of Authenticity in American Presidential Campaigns, Erica Seifert documents the growing importance over a 25-year period of the voters’ perception of candidates’ authenticity in determining the outcome of presidential elections. In recent years Al Gore, John Kerry and Mitt Romney’s bids for the presidency were all ...