claire potter Archives - Page 2 of 3

Event

Live at Public Seminar: John D’Emilio

Public Seminar celebrates the publication of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood

October 10, 2022 • by Public Seminar

John D’Emilio, a pioneering figure in the field of LGBTQIA+ history, will join Public Seminar Co-Executive Editor Claire Potter in a discussion of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood....

Religion

Why Christianity and the Fate of American Democracy Are Intertwined

An interview with intellectual historian David Hollinger

September 26, 2022 • by Claire Potter and David A. Hollinger

We're now confronted with a remarkable paradox. Our increasingly secular society is saddled with increasingly religious politics. Religion is ever-more prominent in Supreme Court decisions and in the statements that candidates for political office make. Politics are not only more religious, they are more Christian. ...

Climate & Ecology

Why We Need to Care About Animal Ethics in a Time When Humans Suffer Too

Alice Crary and Lori Gruen share their “critical animal theory” in a conversation with Public Seminar

September 14, 2022 • by Claire Potter, Lori Gruen and Alice Crary

The division between “humans” and “animals” is not a natural division, but a conceptual one that privileges humans over animals, and not even all humans. This divide operates in a way that justifies the oppression of animals and humans thought to be “closer” to animals, which has often meant women, ...

Higher Ed

Why Should Schools Be Mental Health Care Providers?

A capacious national health system should provide systemic solutions for young people

September 8, 2022 • by Claire Potter

Caring for students’ emotional needs is now an unspoken part of the contract you sign as a university professor. ...

Why Should Schools Be Mental Health Care Providers?

History

How to Become a Queer Historian

An interview with San Francisco State University scholar-activist Marc Stein

June 1, 2022 • by Claire Potter and Marc Stein

Marc Stein is Professor of History at San Francisco State University, where he teaches U.S. law, politics, sexuality, gender, race, and social movements. He’s also an old friend: we met when Marc was in graduate school and I was starting my career as a visiting professor at The University of ...

Interviews

Phillis Wheatley’s Lost Years

She didn’t go far from Boston, but a keen-eyed historian glimpsed her in the archive—and that find opens up a door to both the poet’s marriage and the final years of slavery in Massachusetts

March 16, 2022 • by Cornelia H. Dayton and Claire Potter

In September 2021, University of Connecticut historian Cornelia Dayton broke the news that three “lost” years of African American poet Phillis Wheatley had been accounted for: the first three years of her marriage to John Peters, a free Black New Englander who she married in 1780. In an article published ...

Interviews

The University Ate My Neighborhood

A conversation with urbanist and cultural historian Davarian L. Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities

February 15, 2022 • by Davarian L. Baldwin and Claire Potter

Claire Potter sat down with urbanist Davarian L. Baldwin to discuss his new book, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021), to hash out what these relationships do to reshape our cities....

Interviews

Why Privatization Is Worse Than You Know

An argument for more, and better, government

January 7, 2022 • by Donald Cohen and Claire Potter

Many people think privatization only means contracting for a prison or selling off a water system, but my definition is broader: private control of, and power over, public goods. By public goods, I mean things that we all depend on, essential services. So that includes prisons, but it also includes ...

Why Privatization Is Worse Than You Know

Feature

Electability, Caster Semenya, and Rachel Held Evans

Past Present Episode 179

May 14, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Niki, Neil, and Natalia discuss the concept of “electability,” the gender policing of South African runner Caster Semenya, and the legacy of Christian writer Rachel Held Evans. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: With over 20 Democratic candidates in the running, “ electability” is ...

Electability, Caster Semenya, and Rachel Held Evans

Feature

For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Ideology looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival

April 24, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Ideology doesn’t only undermine democracy, as I tried to demonstrate in my last post. It looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival. I thought about this reading Jake Davis’s “Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal. Davis’s essay attracted a great deal of attention, with ...

For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Feature

Making Room for Democracy

On the beauty of gray, the social condition, and individual and group responsibility

June 1, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

In my Friday posts, I have focused on the beauty of gray, presenting arguments for the good over the ideal and for openness to people and principles other than our own. I have argued, further, that these are preconditions for acting together against the dark forces of our times, 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 ...