Memorials Against Violence in Mexico

A conversation on memory activism for truth and justice

Since 2006, Mexico has seen more than 300,000 murders and more than 110,000 people disappeared. Faced with a constant increase in violence, activists have turned to a new strategy: collective actions and demands centered around the work of memory. In their new book Las Luchas por la Memoria Contra las ...
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Memorials Against Violence in Mexico

No More Girl Bosses

Episode 69: A conversation with Serene Khader about her book Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop

On October 12, 2020, Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was sworn in for her testimony before the Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee. If you were a Democrat and a feminist, it was a galling moment for so many reasons. First, the United ...
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No More Girl Bosses

Border Time

Policing movement in the Rio Grande Valley

The southern border of the United States has been policed intensively for over half a century. Donald Trump and many other global political leaders have narrowed their policy focuses from bordering more generally to building walls. Even short trips to the US-Mexico border make clear that the wall is not ...
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Border Time

Curzio Malaparte’s War

The notorious war correspondent wanted to show us a civil war between different modes of industrialized modernity

Two of the most shocking books about World War II were written by the Italian fascist litterateur and dandy Curzio Malaparte. His “novels” Kaputt and The Skin have been canonized through incorporation into the wonderful series of New York Review Classics. They are hailed by luminaries like Milan Kundera, Gary ...
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Curzio Malaparte’s War

Israel’s American History

On Israel’s ambivalent relationship with the United States and OZ Frankel’s latest book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973

Historian Oz Frankel's new book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973 (Stanford University Press, 2024), examines the multifaceted and contradictory presence of the United States in Israel during a short but significant period of history. In a conversation with Claire Potter, Frankel shares the ...
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Israel’s American History

To The Constitution, With Love

Episode 63: A conversation with historian Mary Ellen Curtain about her book She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan’s Life and Legacy in Black Politics

In the summer of 1974, I was glued to the television for most of the day. For the first time in my life, my parents didn’t insist that I shut it off, go outside—do something useful. That was Watergate Summer, the weeks that a national drama played out all day on ...
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To The Constitution, With Love

How the GOP Killed Dissent

Episode 61: Marsha E. Barrett on her new book, Nelson Rockefeller’s Dilemma: The Fight to Save Moderate Republicanism

Ana Navarro is probably best known for her work on the popular daytime talk show, The View. But she also has serious chops as a Republican political strategist. She served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s staff—you may recall that Bush was leveled by Donald J. Trump early in the 2016 ...
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How the GOP Killed Dissent

When We Lose, We Win

Episode 60: Talking with historian Brenda Wineapple about civil rights, culture wars, the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial and her new book, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted A Nation

In 2016, white evangelical Christians showed up at the polls in force for Donald J. Trump, part of a diverse movement that defied expectations to sweep him into the White House. In the past decade, scholars and journalists have spilled a lot of ink on what seemed initially like a ...
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When We Lose, We Win

How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

A conversation with Ronnie Grinberg about her book Write Like a Man

In this biographical study of the New York Jewish intellectuals behind journals like Partisan Review, Dissent, and Commentary, Grinberg focuses on prominent post war writers and editors like Irving Howe, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, and Irving Kristol, many of them native New Yorkers and graduates of City College....

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How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Living through war can transform how we engage with philosophy

This lecture was delivered as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic ...
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Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

At the Aspen Ideas Climate Summit in spring 2022—one of those gatherings of the well-informed and the well-to-do so beloved by American politicians—Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, urged Republicans to “take back” their party from Donald Trump. “This country,” the veteran Democratic leader opined, “needs a ...
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How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct