Why Freedom of Expression Is At Stake In Italy

The suspension of a teacher is sparking debate across the country

At this very moment, hundreds of Italian teachers are expressing their open dissent with this decision on social media, and writing in solidarity with the recently suspended 63-year-old teacher. My aim is not to analyze whether the comparison between Interior Minister and rightist populist League party leader Matteo Salvini and Benito Mussolini ...
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Representation, Currency, and Generation Z

How the Tubman $20 Bill Became a New Front in the American Culture Wars

Although they are digitally-native Generation Z teens, my students think that it matters who we see on something as ubiquitous as our money. Even though they spend a lot of their time online, they still feel passionate about adding diversity to the historical figures that grace our paper money. The ...
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Letter One to Germany: Visiting New York City Under Trump

In February 2019, Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit observes the State of the Union from NYC

This article was originally published in German in Deutschlandfunk Kultur on February 20, 2019 and has been slightly revised. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Deutschlandfunk Kultur. --- A man on West 14th Street in Manhattan is handing out free phone cards. A small line has formed of those in ...
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Trump, Impeachment, and the Question of Democratic Legitimacy

To allow Trump to continue to act as if he has legitimacy is simply to continue to legitimate him and his party

Trump declares boldly and angrily that he is President because he won the election; that as President he is entitled to disparage long-standing governmental norms, break the law, declare national emergencies on a whim, assault the civil rights and liberties of immigrants, minorities, and women, and treat his critics, in ...
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#OnArrive — But Where Are We?

Unpacking the electoral performance of Europe’s nationalist right

The last time citizens of European Union member states displayed enthusiasm for the European Parliamentary elections was in 1979 when turnout was 61.9 percent. 1979 was the year that the elections began and the year that the Union consisted of only nine members. In the five Parliamentary elections that have ...
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On Capitalism

The worst there Is, except for all the others

Winston Churchill’s famous comment on democracy as a political system applies equally to free enterprise capitalism as an economic system. No other economic form provides the incentives to economic innovation and creativity, relates the desires of the consumer to the efforts of the producer, encourages the voluntary savings and investment ...
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On Capitalism

Speculating on Chaos in Financialized Capitalism

Speculations, Spectacles, Spectres

Across the channel, during the upheaval caused by the gilets jaunes movement, media and government have condemned protestors’ actions for the continuing chaos they have brought upon France’s city centers. Back in autumn, some weeks before the eruption of the gilet jaunes protests, President Macron used his Armistice Speech to focus on the ...
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White Men Running (For President)

The DNC’s nostalgic embrace of familiar, and obsolete, white male leadership

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one's own fantasy.”  Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and its Discontents.” In this 2020 Democratic primary reality TV season, Biden, O’Rourke, Buttigieg, and Sanders all seem to be performing different facets of a kind of idealized white male type. ...
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White Men Running (For President)

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

Yesterday (Thursday) the White House announced that Donald Trump has authorized Attorney General William Barr to unilaterally declassify any documents necessary to perform an investigation of the Mueller investigation. The New York Times headline accurately summarized the move: “ Trump Gives Attorney General Sweeping Power in Review of 2016 Campaign Inquiry .” Today (Friday) Trump ...
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Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

Of Silenced Narratives and Political Deceits

Exploding Hyper Nationalism in India and the Case of Kashmir

In the ongoing drumbeat of democracy or the 'great spectacle' of the Indian elections, Indians; left, right or centre are anxiously awaiting to see whether India voted to 'save its Indian spirit', or whether it will move a step further towards being a Hindu majoritarian state. For Kashmiris, plumbing the ...
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Of Silenced Narratives and Political Deceits

Corpus Nullius: How Europe Recast the Migrant Body

Narratives of the migrant-refugee crisis reflect the interests they serve

After a record number of refugees arrived in Europe in 2015 following the Syrian collapse, Europe’s reaction provided the conditions for an even more fundamental change. As the fences went up at each boundary within a previously borderless Schengen Europe -- almost as an act of self-reproach following Angela Merkel’s acceptance ...
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Corpus Nullius: How Europe Recast the Migrant Body

Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers

That is all that can be expected, and it is enough!

The Trump administration continues to refuse all Congressional oversight and make a mockery of the rule of law, while Trump himself continues to denounce the Mueller team and his political opponents as “traitors” and to rally his mobs against “enemies of the people.” Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues ...
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Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers