Authoritarianism Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Switzerland, January 22

After the thugs

January 22, 2026 • by Adam Tooze

Walking past the pavilion proclaiming “Freedom 250.” The blank metal of the decaled window frames, evokes nothing of the sort. Faded wraps in red, white, and blue remind one of a gambling parlor in some bedraggled third-tier pedestrian mall. Or of the sort of images that enthusiastic men glue to cars and motorbikes. Strip ...

Education

The Words We Learn to Fear

How authoritarianism begins with the policing of language

December 4, 2025 • by Maria B. Olujic

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that line until my own country broke apart. Now I see what he meant—when people learn to fear their own words, it is its own form of exile. Two of my uncles learned this early: ...

Democracy

A Dystopian Novel for Our Times

What being tyrannized tastes like

May 15, 2025 • by Susan Yelavich

On one level, the premise of Prophet Song (Oneworld, 2023), the recent Booker-winning novel by the Irish writer Paul Lynch, is simple enough: It’s about the existential dilemmas a mother faces in an authoritarian state. But on every other level, Prophet Song exceeds the expectations of a dystopian tale. Instead ...

Education

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

The discursive stylings of an authoritarian campus administration

October 24, 2024 • by Jessica Storey-Nagy

Instead of grading papers and preparing final exams last April, I was at Dunn Meadow, a public gathering space on Indiana University (IU) Bloomington’s campus. My aim, and that of my colleagues, was to protect student protesters from the violence sanctioned by IU’s top administrators, another possible intrusion by the ...

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

Democracy

Is Europe’s Democracy in Crisis?

Europe’s democracy is in a good place, but technological changes are challenging it

April 10, 2023 • by Filip Kostelka

Democracy is currently not in crisis and, in fact, we live in one of its best times....

Democracy

Can Art Reimagine Freedom of Speech?

Curators Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich discuss Studies into Darkness

November 1, 2022 • by Carin Kuoni, Laura Raicovich and Lindsey Scharold

Building up to the Trump presidency in the U.S. and, at the same time, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian regimes in democracies in Europe, Hungary, and Italy years prior to that, it seemed very important to look at the Right and its complete embrace of freedom of speech in ...

COVID-19

Habermas on the Legitimacy of Lockdown

Habermas argued that the state’s duty to protect life outweighed all individual rights. His critics accused him of authoritarianism.

February 23, 2022 • by Peter J. Verovšek

Jürgen Habermas recently argued that the pandemic measures of the German government hadn’t gone far enough. To weigh the state’s duty to protect life against other rights and freedoms was unconstitutional, he warned. In the ensuing controversy, critics accused him of authoritarianism. ...

Politics

Moonwalking in Brasilia

How Jair Bolsonaro creates the illusion of moving forward while sliding back

October 26, 2021 • by Felippe Ramos

In Brazil's ongoing experiment with a far-right populist President, there is a gap between Jair Bolsonaro's performance in face-to-face rallies and on social networks and his minimal accomplishments as a politician constrained by a complex constitutional network of institutions and norms. Bolsonaro’s oral and written communication is filled with the hallmarks ...

Democracy

“Carl Schmitt’s Comeback?”

Understanding Trump and global authoritarianism

February 17, 2021 • by William E. Scheuerman

As the saying goes: “that was then, but this is now.” I had little inkling that Schmitt would soon become pertinent to present-day political developments. With the dramatic worldwide emergence of authoritarian populism, Schmitt’s thinking seems disturbingly relevant. As the Cambridge jurist Lars Vinx has correctly noted, Schmitt’s significance today ...

Democracy

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately

February 3, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Our effort to create and nourish a “world-wide committee of democratic correspondence” began long before the coronavirus laid waste to our world. And as a world-wide network, our efforts have always involved a strong online component. For the web affords our far-flung group many opportunities for the sharing of ideas ...

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

Democracy

Hopeful New Year!

Five Notes Against Despair, 2021

January 14, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The Covid-19 pandemic is spreading and is ineffectively controlled, as is the global political pandemic, spectacularly on view in Washington, D.C. White supremacy and politicized misogyny, homophobia and transphobia are becoming ever more virulent, supporting an ascendent right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Economic and social inequalities are increasing, as police ...

Democracy

Oppression, Resistance and High-Tech Totalitarianism

December 16, 2020 • by Teng Biao

But most censorship does not directly involve such happenings. It involves fear of such happenings. Perry Link had a classic metaphor - He described the CCP's censorship system as an “Anaconda in the Chandelier”. The silence of the anaconda crouching overhead means “the big brother is watching you!” So everyone will automatically ...