Torture Archives - Public Seminar

Body & Mind

“We feel well as long as we do not feel our body”

June 18, 2024 • by Austin Tannenbaum

But having been tortured does not justify the torture others, even under the guise of self-protection. Améry said as much....

Immigrants might become the next target for state-sponsored terrors

May 2, 2023 • by Joseph Margulies

We create Guantánamos in those fevered moments when imagined needs enflame ancient hatreds and modern fears, telling ourselves they will keep us safe and forgetting that they never have before. ...

Politics

Understanding Kashmir’s Crisis

Current narratives ignore key histories

December 26, 2019 • by Shubh Mathur

On August 5, the Indian government, headed by the hard-right Hindu nationalist party BJP, unilaterally revoked Articles 370 of the Indian Constitution, ending the limited autonomy of Kashmir. This move of dubious legality, carried out entirely without consulting Kashmiris, was supported by a majority in the Indian parliament. Anticipating bitter ...

Feature

The Kinds of Selves We Are

Jill Stauffer’s Ethical Loneliness reveals the injustice of not being heard

November 8, 2018 • by Jill Stauffer

Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being acknowledged. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political institutions that, in failing to listen well to survivors, deny them redress by negating their testimony ...

Feature

The Spy who Psychoanalyzed Me

Psychology’s long and shameful history with torture

May 28, 2018 • by Tristan Chirico

After a highly controversial confirmation process, Gina Haspel is now director of the CIA. At the heart of the controversy surrounding her nomination were Haspel's alleged ties to the systematic torture of terrorism suspects conducted at so-called “black sites” during the Bush Era -- one of which Haspel oversaw in ...

Feature

The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Thoughts on social interaction, and questions of individual recognition and responsibility

May 18, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I hope we can agree: we are not alone, and even when we are alone, we are not alone. We humans are what we are as we interact with each other: no interaction, no person; no interaction, no politics; no interaction, no art, science and love; no sex and no ...

The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Feature

“Bloody Gina,” the CIA, and the Senate

Why Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing was a democratic farce

May 15, 2018 • by Jeremy Varon

Growing up near Washington, D.C., I developed a child’s awe at the city’s great temples of democracy: its monuments to Lincoln and Jefferson; the National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence is housed; the Capitol Rotunda; and even the modern, workaday offices of Congress where the people’s business is done. ...

Feature

Taking Political Differences Seriously

Why I Did Not Protest John Yoo at the APSA Meetings

September 20, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

But I did not protest John Yoo's presence at this year's APSA meeting in San Francisco, and the reason why is simple: I believe the protest was misplaced and also advanced a principle that I find disturbing and cannot support. Let me be clear: I did not and do not “oppose” ...

Feature

Stand Against Torture

Political Scientists Refuse to Legitimate Torture

September 20, 2017 • by Paul A. Passavant and Jodi Dean

Upon hearing that John Yoo was scheduled to appear at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), held August 31 -- September 3, 2017, a number of Political Scientists organized a response. The theme of the annual meeting was “The Quest for Legitimacy: Actors, Audiences and Aspirations." ...

Activism

Punching Nazis in the Face

A philosopher makes the case for violent resistance

March 6, 2017 • by Eric Anthamatten

My human dignity lay in this punch to the jaw... —Jean Améry, At The Mind's Limits As white supremacist Richard Spencer was being interviewed on camera, a masked protester punched him square in the jaw. Many conservatives looked at this as evidence of "cry-baby” liberalism: unable to handle alternative points of view, ...

Feature

GTMO Is Open for Business

Be Afraid!

February 15, 2017 • by Jeremy Varon

On February 13, Republican Senators begged Trump in a joint letter to issue the order. Exceeding even its harsh terms, their letter called for the suspension of GTMO’s Periodic Review Boards (PRBs). First convened in 2013, the PRBs have cleared for release dozens of prisoners hitherto destined for indefinite detention ...

Feature

Giulio Regeni

Toward a Radical Use of Memory

January 24, 2017 • by Franco Palazzi and Michela Pusterla

“A highly promising young scholar of social and economic development in the Middle East,” as his obituary reads, Giulio Regeni was a PhD candidate at Cambridge, who moved to Cairo for his fieldwork, researching independent trade unions, especially that of street vendors, in post-Mubarak and post-Morsi Egypt. After disappearing on ...