Richard Hofstadter Archives

History

Fifty Years of Social Research

Arien Mack reflects on her half-century stewardship of The New School’s flagship quarterly journal

March 1, 2020 • by Arien Mack and James Miller

James Miller [JM]: Let’s start at the beginning. What year did you come to The New School for Social Research? Arien Mack [AM]: 1966. I had just gotten my Ph.D. JM: At that time, how much did you know about the legacy, the traditions of The New School? Did you know anything at all ...

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Mass Shooting and the Spectacle of Whiteness

Lynching as spectacle

April 13, 2018 • by Benjamin Balthaser

Fredric Jameson once noted that déjà vu is possible for an experience one has never had: postmodernism is an amnesia of eternal returns. I remember when I witnessed the unfolding of the Columbine massacre on CNN – the event that culturally marked the beginning of an era of school shootings – it ...

Mass Shooting and the Spectacle of Whiteness

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Fantasy Fatigue

A history without historical perspective

February 26, 2018 • by Tim Lacy

No one attending to post-2008 politics in the United States, or to the country’s cultural and social trends since, will deny the generic presence of ignorance, unreason, or irrationalism. By 2016 and 2017, word-of-the-year nominations included“post-truth”and “fake news,” respectively. Somehow Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” did not make the cut for ...

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American Idiot

Rethinking Anti-Intellectualism in the Age of Trump

August 25, 2017 • by Nicholas Baer

“On my arrival in the United States I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the subjects, and so little among the heads of the Government.” We may fairly assume that Alexis de Tocqueville would be even more surprised if he were to visit today. For while Tocqueville ...

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Secrecy and the Conspiratorial Mindset

How the secrecy we’re told protects our democracy is in fact breaking it down

March 31, 2017 • by Steve Cucharo

If there is a phrase in the entire essay that explains our current predicament as it relates to conspiratorial thinking and the advent of the “post-truth age” it might be this one. While it is common to think of the conspiratorial mindset as a cognitive deficiency, as a by-product of ...