Social Justice Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

In Episode 35, Claire Potter chats with historian Drew Faust about fighting back, making change, and her new memoir, Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

August 28, 2023 • by Claire Potter

In Episode 35, Claire Potter chats with historian Drew Faust about fighting back, making change, and her new memoir, Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury...

Activism

How the Joker and Pikachu become symbols of the Chilean social uprising, in an excerpt from Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov’s new book

September 21, 2022 • by Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov

Humor provided a powerful weapon in the ﬁght to topple the civic-military dictatorship. The radical deprivation of human rights during the Pinochet regime had secondary costs, among which were the loss of a sense of freedom, spontaneity, and overall well-being. ...

Activism

Statement about Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict

A letter from the president of The New School

November 22, 2021 • by Dwight A. McBride

Dear New School students and colleagues, I want to take a moment to respond to the verdict that was delivered last Friday afternoon in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, wherein Mr. Rittenhouse was found to be not guilty on all counts. I have heard from many individuals in The New School community ...

Statement about Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict

Democracy

The Chauvin Verdict and Common Sense

Further reflections on democracy and social justice

April 29, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am relieved by the verdict and, of course, I’m not alone. We knew that Chauvin was guilty as sin: the racist, apparently remorseless, cold blooded killer of George Floyd. It was clear as day, common sense. But common sense has failed us when it comes to American policing and ...

Uncategorized

The New Essentialism

Old ways of thinking are returning–again

March 25, 2021 • by Simon Garnett

_____ If we share the assumption that every culture is necessarily incomplete in itself and that there is no such thing as a self-contained, homogeneous culture, then the very definition of a given culture has to include what I would call inter-translatability. In other words, being-in-translation is an essential defining feature ...

Democracy

Democracy and Social Justice

On the significance of C.T. Vivian and Adam Michnik

March 11, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The New York Times, April 26, 1984: “A Polish Nobel laureate in exile stood in a church on lower Fifth Avenue yesterday and read an open letter of moral outrage from a jailed dissident in Poland to his jailer. The letter, as another speaker put it, fell like ''a tornado'' on the ...

The Left

A Genealogy of White Privilege

An essay on the politics of confession & guilt

March 11, 2021 • by James Miller

_____ How much shame and guilt should a movement for social justice try deliberately to cultivate? In recent years, this question, superficially abstract, has again become personal for me, both in my ongoing involvement in political protest movements, and my job as a teacher, working at an institution devoted to promoting equity, ...

Announcements

Decolonizing Psychology: Applications in Research & Clinical Practice

A three-session online conference presented by the department of psychology at The New School for Social Research

October 23, 2020 • by Andre Broussard

Mainstream psychology continues to privilege and promote the interests of the majority, in particular those in Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries. The call for a decolonial turn in psychology has gathered momentum over recent years, along with greater reflection on how the field reproduces and reinforces systems ...

Decolonizing Psychology: Applications in Research & Clinical Practice

Politics

Representative John Lewis, a Hero for Our Time

And what Donald Trump could still learn from him

July 18, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

______________________ Last night, just before midnight, we heard the news that 80-year-old Georgia Representative John Lewis has passed away from pancreatic cancer. As a young adult, Lewis was a “troublemaker,” breaking the laws of his state: he broke the laws upholding racial segregation. He organized voting registration drives and in 1960 was ...