Islamophobia Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Obama Said He’d Close Guantánamo — These Activists Are Pushing Biden to Finish the Job

What should have been an end to the Guantánamo saga in 2012, was only the beginning of more grueling work for this anti-torture coalition

April 1, 2021 • by Jeremy Varon

_____ I remember, as if in a distant dream, repeating through sobs of joy and exhaustion, “It’s over. It’s over.” On live TV President Obama had just signed, as his first official act in January 2009, an executive order mandating the closure of the prison at Guantánamo. To Obama’s right stood ...

Obama Said He’d Close Guantánamo — These Activists Are Pushing Biden to Finish the Job

Feature

Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power

September 21, 2016 • by David Ost

Eviscerating the Constitutional Court and purging the judiciary, complete politicization of the civil service, turning public media into a government mouthpiece, restricting opposition prerogatives in parliament, unilateral wholesale change of the Constitution or plain violation of it, official tolerance and even promotion of racism and bigotry, administrative assertion of traditional ...

Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power

Uncategorized

Orbán’s Politics of Fear and Hatred in Hungary

On a European nation’s far-right response to the refugee crisis

December 23, 2015 • by János Kis

Although the position on the migrant issue put forward by the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is morally hard to digest, many people think it is nevertheless the only way to save Europe from the flood of masses that threatens to destabilize the continent. I dispute this ...

Race

Solidarity with Muslim Women: A Personal Letter

December 12, 2015 • by Asifa Quraishi-Landes

Asifa Quraishi-Landes, Associate Professor of Law at University of Wisconsin, sent the following e-mail to her colleagues on December 3, 2015. It was subsequently circulated through her network, resulting in Nancy Fraser bringing it to our attention. We publish it in solidarity with Asifa Quraishi-Landes and "visibly Muslim Women." -JG Hi UW ...

Solidarity with Muslim Women: A Personal Letter

Uncategorized

Let’s Change the Future

On reclaiming our humanity in times of fear

November 17, 2015 • by Zachary Sunderman

I have a strange feeling, like I’ve been here before.

Everything looks familiar. The highly coordinated Islamist attack on a “Western” nation; the bloodthirsty demand for revenge; the calls to war abroad and the suspension of liberties at home; the simplification of the world into ...

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Race

Charlie Hebdo and the Appeal for French Context

White & Black Analytics

June 11, 2015 • by Alana Lentin

The attacks on the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January 2015, during which fourteen people were killed, pose a specific problem for the white left. The call to contextualize Charlie Hebdo foregrounded a structurally white French context, in which people of colour ...

Race

The Muslims are Coming! Video of Arun Kundani’s Lecture

Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic war on terror

February 26, 2015 • by Zeyno Ustun

This lecture by Arun Kundani, Adjunct Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, was part of the NSSR Sociology Lecture Series. It took place on February 9, 2015, in the Wolff Conference Room of the Vera List Academic Center at 6 E. 16th St. in New York.

Over the last few ...

Europe & Central Asia

We Say No to the “Sacred Union”

January 22, 2015 • by Public Voices

In the aftermath of the killings at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, critical voices have largely been drowned in the general sea of undifferentiated outrage. But this statement by French colleagues, which recently appeared in Le Monde, is a major intervention and a welcome exception.

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Race

A Postcard from France: A Canadian in Avignon

January 14, 2015 • by Benjamin Evans

To provide some context for what follows: I live in France, in the small southern city of Avignon. My wife, Audrey, is French, but I’m not. I, like so many others here, am “an immigrant.” Recent events have made the last few days emotionally and intellectually complex. I’ve been, at ...

A Postcard from France: A Canadian in Avignon

Uncategorized

Seven Steps toward Enlightenment: The Case of the French Killings

January 12, 2015 • by Eli Zaretsky

When a crystal breaks, it breaks along lines of pre-existing weakness. Thus traumatic assaults, like the one in Paris, can serve as X-rays into the body politic that endures them. Certainly, the US invasion of Iraq, a response to 9/11, serves as a paradigm case of how a terroristic attack ...

Seven Steps toward Enlightenment: The Case of the French Killings

Uncategorized

The Weird Global Media Event

January 11, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

It will be made of half-facts and one-and-a-half facts. And made quickly, as the desire for a media story quickly outstrips the reliable data. Certain corrections will later have to be made -- silently. It is only global in appearing to speak of a world; somewhere indifference reigns. But it does ...