abolition Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

Practical Prison Abolition

An interview with Anna Terwiel on how thinking about justice in terms of personal experience can disrupt the belief that safety requires violent state intervention

June 23, 2026 • by Anna Terwiel and Madeline Trice

There are nearly two million people incarcerated in the United States. The idea of an end to the mass incarceration of those deemed criminal is perceived as far-fetched, naive, or unrealistic. But political scholar Anna Terwiel disagrees. In her new book, Prison Abolition for Realists (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), ...

History

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

A brief genealogy of nonviolent resistance

November 18, 2025 • by Bennett Parten

In 1959, Martin Luther King Jr., then only 30 years old and fresh off leading the Montgomery bus boycotts, traveled to India to pay homage to one of his heroes, the late Mahatma Gandhi. Over the course of five weeks, King met with Indian heads of state, spoke with some ...

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Podcast

The First Family of Abolition

Why Now? With Claire Potter, Episode 2

November 15, 2022 • by Claire Potter

A conversation with historian Kerri Greenidge about her new book, "The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family"...

Europe & Central Asia

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

The renewed threat of nuclear war—and the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety

October 25, 2022 • by James Carroll and Robert Jay Lifton

Nuclear complacency is multifaceted. A certain amount of nuclear fear is appropriate to our situation. When we give in to what you’re calling nuclear complacency, it’s because we have insufficient fear of what is actually dangerous....

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

War

Personal Reflections on War and Peace

A response to James Carroll

October 24, 2022 • by Frida Berrigan

The history of nonviolent successes is underreported, understudied, and under-understood. ...

Interviews

Towards Constructive Politics

What oppression is, at the end of the day, is a world that has been built in a bad way

May 23, 2022 • by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Matene Toure

It just isn’t true that the only problem that confronts people who are trying to learn the truth about their social system is that they haven’t talked to enough people who have less money than them, or a more marginalized racial or gender identity. That’s among the problems, but the ...

History

The Color of Abolition

Linda Hirshman introduces her new book on Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman

February 9, 2022 • by Linda Hirshman

I was looking for the mechanics of activism—the meetings, the speeches, the broadsides, the litigation—for my analysis. And Garrison and Douglass were both central to the mechanics of activism. Their alliance fueled critical years of the movement, and their breakup affected the direction of the movement profoundly. This was the ...