Democracy Archives - Page 65 of 97

Feature

Who’s Afraid of the Post-factual?

From Alternative Truth to True Alternatives

July 9, 2017 • by Emmanuel Alloa

Kellyanne Conway, the advisor to President Donald Trump, must be credited for having coined a new philosophical concept: alternative facts. When confronted with the episode in which White House press Secretary Sean Spicer had grossly misstated the figures concerning the people present at the presidential inauguration, Conway disputed that Spicer ...

Education

Our Dark Times

Setting the Intellectual and Political Context for the Investigation of Media, The New Authoritarianism and Its Alternatives

July 7, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This seminar has a long history, predating the Democracy and Diversity Institute, and born as an oppositionist activity in the good old bad days of previously existing socialism. Adam Michnik first imagined it, after he received an honorary doctorate from The New School in a clandestine award ceremony in 1984 in ...

Feature

The Politician as a Doctor

An Image of the Credibility Crisis in Chile

July 6, 2017 • by Beatriz Vega Elizondo

The presidential election in Chile is coming, and the candidate leading the polls is the businessman and former president Sebastián Piñera. He preceded the second government of the current president, the doctor Michelle Bachelet. If Piñera is elected once more, two periods of center-left governance -- presided over by a ...

Power and Crisis

Jerusalem on the Fourth of July

Reflections a bold and immoral message to Americans

July 5, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

A leftover from President Trump’s visit here in late May, the banner’s message is unambiguous. What makes it somewhat interesting is that immediately to its left we saw another banner that depicts (in a clownish and offensive way reminiscent of the Cleveland MLB team’s infamous logo) an American Indian who ...

Feature

The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro

A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852

July 4, 2017 • by Frederick Douglass

On July 5, 1852, abolitionist and self-emancipated slave Frederick Douglass delivered a critique of the Constitution of the United States to the nineteen members of Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York and their guests. In this address, Douglass argued that the values of the Constitution existed in contradiction to the condition ...

Education

The Media, the New Authoritarianism and Its Alternatives

On Teaching, Once Again, in the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Poland, syllabus included

July 3, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This is the 26th year of The New School’s Democracy and Diversity Institute. I have participated in just about all of them. One year, my father was gravely ill and I had to bug out. Recently, I have missed a few years, as I have been following a promise to ...

The Media, the New Authoritarianism and Its Alternatives

Feature

Jared Kushner, Quiet American

On Politics and Optics

June 30, 2017 • by James Daniel

On June 19th, Jared Kushner made his first public statement since taking the position of Donald Trump’s senior advisor. The remarks themselves, while strangely ignorant, were unexceptional. Rather, it was the revelation of Kushner’s voice, adenoidal, unexpectedly puerile, that gave rise to such media headlines as Jezebel’s “BREAKING: This Is ...

Feature

What Does the Supreme Court’s Decision on the Trump Executive Order Mean for Refugees?

A Hopeful View

June 27, 2017 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

The commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision on the Trump Executive Orders has largely focused on the part of the Orders that imposed the travel ban on six predominantly Muslim countries. Less noticed have been the paragraphs at the end of the decision that discuss the Orders’ suspension of the ...

What Does the Supreme Court’s Decision on the Trump Executive Order Mean for Refugees?

Feature

What’s With Japanese Women?

Motherhood and Gender Inequality

June 26, 2017 • by Frances McCall Rosenbluth

Japan ranks 114th out of 144 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Equality Index. Fewer than half of working age women have jobs, and many of those are part time positions without benefits. Women working in full time jobs can expect 73% of the hourly wage of their male ...

Feature

When White Houses Go Dark

Watergate and the Lessons of History

June 17, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Forty-five years ago today, all the President's men were nervously awaiting the fallout from a break-in at an office at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. where the Democratic National Committee had established its 1972 campaign headquarters. Naughty, naughty. The White House's shadow arm was a jolly crew nicknamed "the Plumbers." Among ...

Feature

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

How I Can’t Stop Worrying About the Bomb and the Threat to Democracy in America

June 14, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

So it’s Donald Trump’s birthday today. Too bad Marilyn Monroe isn’t around. Nothing less than her famous greeting to John F. Kennedy would satisfy his outsized ego. His needs are profoundly disturbing, as indicated by the spectacle of the first meeting of his full cabinet. I strongly recommend that you view this ...

Feature

Trump as Ubu Roi

On the charismatic appeal of vulgarity

June 6, 2017 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

Many are the analogies for the current President of the United States. Such analogies always contain within them theoretical debates about the nature of Trump’s appeal, the prospects for his rule, and how the coterie around him will conduct themselves in relation to Trump, in relation to each other, and ...