United States Archives - Page 37 of 73

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Oprah for President?

Can a celebrity’s civic religion heal our divided nation?

January 10, 2018 • by Claire Potter

I turned off #GoldenGlobes2018 about 45 minutes into the show. I was impressed by what I was hearing from the awards stand. But I was also offended by Seth Meyers’ repeated jabs at Kevin Spacey, the only gay man other than the elderly George Takei to have been accused of ...

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3.2 Million Older Workers Trapped in Unemployment

December 2017 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

January 10, 2018 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an unemployment rate of 3.3% for workers age 55 and older for the month of December, an increase of 0.2 percentage points from November. While this headline unemployment rate is still at historic lows, it only counts as unemployed those who actively sought employment in the ...

3.2 Million Older Workers Trapped in Unemployment

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Martin Luther King’s “False God of Nationalism”

Today’s animus against migrants is a legacy of Jim Crow

January 9, 2018 • by Vaughn A. Booker

A version of this essay was originally published on January 9 2018. Speaking on the first black-owned radio station in the US in 1953, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on “The False God of Nationalism.” In the sermon, preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church and broadcast on Atlanta-based WERD radio ...

Martin Luther King’s “False God of Nationalism”

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NAFTA’s Long Shadow

Where immigration and economic policy meet

January 9, 2018 • by Sarah McNamara

Congressional Democrats and Republicans regularly play the blame game about why there’s no immigration reform. But each party fails to point the finger at one of the major culprits behind the contemporary immigration waves and this political morass: NAFTA. The signing of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in the 1990s ...

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Reclaiming the Values Vote

Religious Critiques of Economic Inequality in American History

January 8, 2018 • by Paul Harvey

The celebration, the parsing and analysis, and the prognostications were not long in coming after Doug Jones’s upset victory over the Republican favorite Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate contest. Historian Neil Young has already summarized much of the immediate reaction here on Public Seminar. Twitter soon trended with variations of #thankblackwomen; ...

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The Canadian Option

Trump year 1

January 7, 2018 • by Anne Balant-Campbell

What have you done in the last year to respond to the upheavals in American politics? This is an installment in a series of short essays that reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. I am living a double life. When I am in front of a class, or going through ...

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Looking Back 40 Years at the National Women’s Conference

Reviewing two recent books on the 1977 National Women’s Conference

January 6, 2018 • by Jo Freeman

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977, are two recently published books about that conference. They are: Shelah Leader and Patricia Hyatt American Women on the Move: The Inside Story of the National Women’s Conference Published by Lexington Books, Paperback 2017, xxi, 169 pp, photos Marjorie Spruill Divided We ...

Looking Back 40 Years at the National Women’s Conference

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Charlottesville in the Mediated Public Sphere

How our mediated experiences bring us together and keep us apart

January 5, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As the New Year begins, we at Public Seminar are busily following up on our work from last year, as I explained in my last post. We are continuing our day to day work with no let up, but marshaling all our extra resources to publish ASAP #Charlottesville: Before and Beyond. I’ve been ...

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The Feminist Eagles

How High School Activism Is On The Rise

January 4, 2018 • by Sari Rosenberg

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary recently announced that “feminism” was the most searched for word in 2017. Several key historical moments last year prompted this spike, including the January 21st Women’s March and the recent #MeToo campaign. Our societal reckoning with the deeply entrenched patriarchal structure and institutional racism has been a long time ...

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2017: A Year of Reaction and Resistance

What About 2018?

January 4, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

Last year, 2017, began with President Donald Trump lying about the size of his inauguration crowd and ended with his lying about the size of the benefits he’ll get from the new tax bill. The year began with the largest protest marches in American history -- the five million strong ...

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Working On The Work of Working Out

A history of fitness in America

January 3, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

“You don’t want to be an aerobics instructor forever, do you?” Condescending and incredulous, the Rolling Stone journalist played by John Travolta asks this question of Jessie (Jamie Lee Curtis), his costar and L.A. fitness queen in the 1985 film Perfect. Jessie’s celebrity in the superficial, slightly louche, SoCal workout scene is portrayed as ...

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#Charlottesville: Before and Beyond

Public Seminar is launching a collection of essays that reflect on and respond to the violence in Charlottesville in August 2017

January 2, 2018 • by The Editors

These events occurred a year after a bitterly divisive election brought problems of racism, white identity politics, and America’s fraught history of racism to the fore. The violence that ensued — four casualties, including the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer — left the country bewildered, angry, and frightened about ascendant ...