Truth Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

How Can MAGA Nation Believe the Unbelievable?

When facts fail to explain the present, belief and faith take over

March 14, 2022 • by Peter Nohrnberg

How have Republican office holders ignored a crucial contradiction of fact: that they ran, and won, on the same 2020 ballot, including in states where Biden was declared the winner?...

How Can MAGA Nation Believe the Unbelievable?

Democracy

Guo Wengui

Trump and the war on truth

March 4, 2021 • by Teng Biao

1. On the morning of December 1, 2020, I was at home teaching an online class for Hunter College students. The subject was how the Chinese government extended its suppression of freedom abroad. Suddenly, outside on the sidewalk in front of my house, a dozen or so masked people appeared, each ...

Feature

Comforting Lies or Unpleasant Truths?

The job of a historian

March 9, 2019 • by Muriel Blaive

After 25 years, I am still hearing the same objections to my historical work and the same dismissive attitude because of who I am, i.e. a woman and a foreigner. And yet, very few people seem to know what history is really about. Here are ten of the misconceptions that ...

Uncategorized

Philosophers on Fake News

Arendt and Foucault on power and truth in media politics

March 19, 2018 • by Haeun Kim

Despite their irrefutable and continued presence in the world today, for some time the practices of banning and censorship have struck me as antiquated, almost quaint, like a desperate but not wholly effective grasp for control by a declining State. My admission of this admittedly unsubstantiated and impressionistic outlook—although not ...

Education

“Post-Truth,” And “Social Research”

Oxford English Dictionary’s word of 2016

December 28, 2016 • by Lydia Nobbs

What happens when facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief? This phenomenon is known as “post-truth,” a term that was named word of 2016 by the Oxford English Dictionary. When false news is seen as credible and the metrics of prediction have ...