Elzbieta Matynia Archives - Public Seminar

History

Democracy’s Endgame?

A plea for sustaining the infrastructure of hope

January 31, 2024 • by Elzbieta Matynia

Though surrounded by these largely man-made fires, we’ve at least been trying to put them out. It would be so much easier, though, to fight these fires if they were not fueled by massive efforts to dismantle the democratic order....

Democracy

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Jeff Goldfarb navigated–and worked through–the polar opposites that can define academic and political life

July 7, 2021 • by Irit Dekel

_____ Jeff Goldfarb has been my teacher, colleague, and friend: our conversations about culture, politics, democracy, and activism—through reading and writing, in public and private forums—have continued since I began as a student in the Department of Sociology at the NSSR. From and with Jeff, and by studying sites within which democracy ...

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Democracy

A Connection That Never Expired

In 1974, Jeffrey Goldfarb went to Poland to do research about democracy—and put down lasting roots

July 7, 2021 • by Elzbieta Matynia and Claire Potter

Claire Potter: Elzbieta, let's begin with when you met Jeff Goldfarb. Elzbieta Matynia: Jeff and Naomi Goldfarb came to Poland in 1973—Jeff was on an IREX fellowship, and Naomi attended some studio classes at the Academy of Arts. I had just begun my graduate studies. But we were both interested in the same ...

Democracy

On Repression and Resistance

December 8, 2020 • by Aysen Candas

I would like to start by thanking the New University in Exile Consortium, particularly the Consortium's marvelous director, Prof. Arien Mack. Thanks to Arien's persistent efforts, uprooted academics from all over the world find their voice in a new community of like-minded scholars. I would also like to thank Prof. ...

Feature

The Democracy Seminar, Then and Now

An Invitation

May 4, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We are imagining a forum for activists and thinkers who support democracy against the looming global threats of authoritarianism. The definitive feature would be openness. It would be a direct outgrowth of a small, international, at first clandestine, informal and improvised New School project, “The Democracy Seminar,” first proposed by ...

Feature

Gray Memory

On a Self-limiting Collective Imagination

April 13, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” So wrote Milan Kundera. Years ago, I found in his bold assertion confirmation of the findings of my first major research project on the sociological dynamics of cultural freedom. I would like to think my study of ...

Feature

Women of the World Unite?

Radical, Liberal and Conservative Feminism, and Democracy

March 9, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

In the wake of the International Women’s Strike, I feel a need to express my support of “the feminism of the ninety nine percent,” but also of “lean-in feminism,” and “conservative feminism” (if there is such a thing), fully aware that they do not support each other. Such is my ...

Feature

A Post on Friendship, Love and Power

On the Power of the Powerless in Dark Times

February 2, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“There are a great many things which cannot withstand the implacable, bright light of the constant presence of others on the public scene; there, only what is considered to be relevant, worthy of being seen and heard, can be tolerated…there are very relevant matters which can survive only in the ...

Education

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere IV

Concluding Remarks

August 29, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It has been an eventful summer. As my dear friend and colleague Robin Wagner-Pacifici would put it, a restless eventful summer: “The world seems out of whack, and everyday routines are, at the least, disrupted. People … experience a vertiginous sensation that a new reality or era may be in the ...

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere IV

Uncategorized

Appreciating Professor Ewa Letowska

3rd Annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award by TCDS and the NSSR Europe Collective

July 25, 2017 • by Tomasz Kitlinski and Pawel Leszkowicz

It is social justice and historical necessity to award Professor Ewa Letowska the Courage in Public Scholarship Award. For us -- an openly gay couple in Poland -- the works and media activism Professor Letowska has always been a beacon of hope. She has voiced freedom and tolerance, more: acceptance and celebration ...

Education

Our Dark Times

Setting the Intellectual and Political Context for the Investigation of Media, The New Authoritarianism and Its Alternatives

July 7, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This seminar has a long history, predating the Democracy and Diversity Institute, and born as an oppositionist activity in the good old bad days of previously existing socialism. Adam Michnik first imagined it, after he received an honorary doctorate from The New School in a clandestine award ceremony in 1984 in ...