When I Was One-Dimensional

How Herbert Marcuse’s text changed my life

"For their sincere reception," Cavell concludes, some life-altering texts require "the shock of conversion." Reading Marcuse, I had felt that shock, with pleasure. Few experiences are quite as rapturous as the conviction that one has embarked on a splendid new life with the firmest of good convictions: as Plato long ...
Read More
When I Was One-Dimensional

“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

For a physician who supported armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, a commitment to radical anti-racism was everything

But what kind of action? There have always been Americans who could imagine a world of racial equality and justice, and who worked in cross-racial alliances to make it happen, not just -- as we do today -- at a street protest, or by issuing heartfelt statements of support, or ...
Read More
“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

The Man Who Predicted Twitter Mobs

Gustave Le Bon and the mind of the crowd

In May, the New York Times published an opinion piece I wrote on the position taken by Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin magazine on the presidential election. Both DSA and the magazine had expressed opposition to support for Joseph Biden, and the editor of Jacobin announced his intention to ...
Read More
The Man Who Predicted Twitter Mobs

Nevertheless, She Persisted

Exiles on 12th Street, Episode Eight

This is the eighth episode of Public Seminar’s podcast, Exiles on 12th Street. If you like it, go to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. Thanks to the bravery of several generations of activist women, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, finally granting women in the ...
Read More
Placeholder

What’s Left?

A response to Jeremy Varon

Jeremy Varon’s interesting and important response raises three questions: 1) What do we mean by a “Left”? 2) How are we to understand the New Left’s break-up and, specifically the relation of the women’s movement to that break-up and 3) How are we to evaluate the Left today? Let me ...

Read More
What’s Left?