Reasons for Hope

Integrating New York Public Schools

In the mostly pessimistic debate over school segregation here’s a reason for optimism: For the first time in decades, we have the possibility — if not yet the reality — of more economically, and also racially, integrated public schools in many neighborhoods in New York City. And there are heartening ...
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Reasons for Hope

Etchings of Democracy

School desks and the politics of nostalgia

Desks have been ubiquitous in American schools since the mid-nineteenth century. Made of wood and iron, bolted to the floor, they began as fixtures in the truest sense of the word. So firmly did they anchor the classroom that when progressive reformers finally introduced movable models in the early 1900s, ...
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Etchings of Democracy

The Banality of Good and Evil

Reflections of an anti-sociologist

I want to make it simple and to the point. That’s the best way to go. But some days, as I think and write, things become more complicated, and I struggle. Today is such a day. I wanted to write a straightforward post on a straightforward theme, on mistakes and ...
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The Banality of Good and Evil

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Satire and the Abuse of Anti-Bullying Rhetoric

The White House Correspondents Dinner at the end of last month sent social media and the commentariat alight once again, reporting a scandal where the only scandal is how easy it is for persons across the political spectrum to be scandalized by what is, in fact, the healthy efflorescence of ...
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Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Thoughts on social interaction, and questions of individual recognition and responsibility

I hope we can agree: we are not alone, and even when we are alone, we are not alone. We humans are what we are as we interact with each other: no interaction, no person; no interaction, no politics; no interaction, no art, science and love; no sex and no ...
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The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

“Enjoy without Restraint!”

Fifty Years Ago in Paris

This is an introduction to an in-depth narrative recollection on one of the most significant episodes of the 20th Century, May 1968 in Paris, from one of its participants, famed psychoanalyst Sergio Benvenuto. The full essay can be found here. This is the first time this essay has been published ...
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“Enjoy without Restraint!”

Why We Strike

An announcement from SENS-UAW Strike Committee

The New School administration has completely abandoned the progressive principles on which it was founded. Sidestepping demands from the community to declare The New School a sanctuary campus, the administration is engaging in widespread union-busting practices while shelling out millions for flagship buildings and fancy new fonts. With an ongoing ...
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Why We Strike

Memory, Justice, History, and the “Right” to be Forgotten

Reflections on Georgetown’s Slave Legacy

For the past two years, since the publication of a front-page New York Times story on Georgetown University’s sale of 272 slaves, I’ve been following the saga how the university has dealt with this information. By way of context, Georgetown is one of 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. When the Society of Jesus ...
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Memory, Justice, History, and the “Right” to be Forgotten

An Open Letter Regarding “Soros Mercenaries” at CEU

Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector of CEU

Dear Friends, Today, Hungarian media outlet Figyelo carried an article listing a few hundred people including members of the CEU community, who 'may' be on the list of so-called "Soros mercenaries." The publication of such a list is contemptible. CEU issued a press statement condemning this. This is a flagrant attempt ...
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An Open Letter Regarding “Soros Mercenaries” at CEU

Intellectual Foremothers

Reflections from The New School

From 2015 through 2017 we traced the intellectual journey of Frieda Wunderlich, the only female professor to join a cohort of European scholars rescued from Nazi Germany by The New School for Social Research in 1933. “Frieda Wunderlich: Gender, Knowledge and Exile” Social Research, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Winter 2017) reviews a distinctive ...
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Intellectual Foremothers

The Parthenon as a Mediator between Greek Mathematics and Liberal Education

An excerpt from Michael Weinman and Geoff Lehman’s latest book

We propose here to pursue a method of speculative reconstruction to detail what can be learned about the “state of the art” in the early development of “liberal education” in fifth-century Greece. One needs to be cautious in speaking about such a development at such a time, which predates ...
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The Parthenon as a Mediator between Greek Mathematics and Liberal Education