Health

Public Health

Death Rights

The risks of New York State’s new Medical Aid in Dying law

February 19, 2026 • by
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act (MAiD) into state law in early February, months after the legislation passed the state Senate in June 2025. The bill’s passing prompted an extended period of debate, advocacy, and amending, centered on whether mentally competent, terminally ill New ...
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Death Rights
Democracy

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

December 8, 2021 • by , and
Award-winning historians Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston spoke (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss their new book Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Edited by Nichols and Preston with fellow historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the collection of curated essays discusses what American grand strategy ...
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Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston
Higher Ed

Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias

College and university presidents should have the courage to halt their reopening

July 30, 2020 • by
In late May, the President of Notre Dame and Thomist philosopher Fr. John I. Jenkins defended his decision to reopen its campus in terms of the university’s religious and moral values, including the virtue of having soldierly “courage” in the face of death. This, he insisted, was a virtuous Aristotelian “mean” between ...
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Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias
Public Health

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Facing a disproportionate death rate among Black people from COVID-19, President Trump shrugs: “What, me, worry?”

July 23, 2020 • by
When faced with emerging epidemics related to HIV/AIDS in the 1970s, to crack cocaine in the 1980s, to Ebola in 2014 and 2018, the U.S. government was slow to intervene on behalf of homosexual populations, or urban poor populations, or African populations, who respectively were most-affected by those public health ...
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The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies
Public Health

Understanding the Fear of Vaccines

How to talk about public health in the age of COVID

July 21, 2020 • by
The pandemic has already changed some minds. Many who were previously opposed to vaccinations have softened their stance. However, misinformation from anti-vax groups continues to be far-reaching and influential. Why are anti-vax claims influential despite the immediate threat of the pandemic? What, if anything, can be done to lower the ...
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Understanding the Fear of Vaccines
Democracy

Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?

Privacy and democracy in the age of pandemics

July 20, 2020 • by and
Americans are scared about encroachments on their data privacy, and rightly so. Prior to 9/11, most advocated limiting the government’s ability to gather and access data in the name of civil liberties. Faced with the threat of terror, however, citizens resigned themselves to encroachments on privacy made in the name ...
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Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?
Feature

How the North American Free Trade Agreement ruined Nourishment

A Review of “Eating NAFTA”

June 13, 2019 • by
Eating NAFTA demonstrates the urgency of responding to a clear and yet mostly invisible health crisis that manifests across borders. It offers tools for rethinking existing approaches to trade and food systems from a transnational, intersectional and structural perspective that shifts the blame that public institutions have placed on individuals (particularly ...
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Feature

Roland Barthes Reports from the Sanatorium

A new collection examines how institutions infantilize society

December 7, 2018 • by and
Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts, recently published by Columbia University Press, provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes' life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence in the 1930s through the height of his career and up to the last years of his life, covering such topics as ...
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Roland Barthes Reports from the Sanatorium
Multi Media

The 2018 Midterm Elections, Gab, and Movember

Past Present Episode 154

November 13, 2018 • by , and
In this episode, Natalia, Niki, and Neil discuss the midterm elections, the alt-right social media platform Gab, and Movember. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: We discussed whether the midterm elections resulted in the “blue wave” Democrats anticipated. Gab, launched as a “free-speech Twitter,” has ...
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The 2018 Midterm Elections, Gab, and Movember
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