Media Archives - Public Seminar

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: ...

Politics

“Things Happen”

Staging sovereignty

November 19, 2025 • by Arthur Goldhammer

We have become accustomed to the Oval Office ritual by which Trump stages his pugnacious primacy. The protocol of the traditional press conference, in which the president stands and the press remains seated until recognized, is inverted. Trump sits as if enthroned on one of his gilded chairs, though not ...

North America

A Martyr and a Meme

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Walter Benjamin’s politics of spectacle should serve as a warning to Trump’s America

September 17, 2025 • by Benjamin Andrew Schupmann

Within minutes of the deadly shot, millions of viewers across the digital public sphere saw right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s last moments in full graphic horror, from multiple angles. Each clip was pared down to shareable content. His death made him at once a martyr and meme. German philosopher Walter Benjamin, writing ...

Literature

Blurb Me

Promotion uber alles in Ada Calhoun’s Crush

June 3, 2025 • by Madeleine Adams

Crush is a book about promoting a book. Author Ada Calhoun opens the novel (Viking, 2025) with an explanation: The unnamed narrator has always had crushes that have never made her stray from her marriage, a quality that also has served her well in her work as a ghostwriter. A ...

Genocide

The Self-Orientalization of Israeli Politics

Why “the only democracy in the Middle East” is cozying up to authoritarian regimes

February 19, 2025 • by Assaf David and Arie Dubnov

Israel has often been described as the only democracy in the Middle East. This perception—flawed and problematic as it is—has been central not only for Israel’s defenders abroad but also for many Jewish Israelis’ self-perception. The power consolidation of an extreme coalition of right-wing political parties in recent years, coupled ...

Music

Taylor Swift, the Modern Alcibiades

We think we know who the pop star is. But does Plato know better?

February 27, 2024 • by Jack Condie

Much ink has been spilled on whether she’s a feminist hero or ruthless capitalist villain. I think she’s a modern day Alcibiades. ...

Film & Performing Arts

Horror and Humor in Hulu’s The Other Black Girl

The genre-bending drama challenges the white workplace

February 26, 2024 • by Kelby Clark

Based on the bestselling novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl dissects the horror of insidious racism in white workplaces...

Horror and Humor in Hulu’s <em>The Other Black Girl</em>

Film & Performing Arts

American Fiction Offers a New Spin on the Challenges Facing Black Artists

Director Cord Jefferson tackles Percival Everett’s 2001, novel Erasure

February 12, 2024 • by Zenzelé Soa-Clarke

Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is garnering praise this awards season for its satirical approach to Black representation...

<em>American Fiction</em> Offers a New Spin on the Challenges Facing Black Artists

Media

Being Online

“The world must be made interesting, an object of curiosity, to answer the economic demand of the media”

November 21, 2023 • by Noam Yuran

The mobile phone has changed what it means to be a person. It has taken away our ability to bear intense emotions. It has infringed our sense of autonomy and diminished our ability to be alone....

The Arts

Docking the Long Tail of Culture

How mass culture has scored a decisive victory in the age of the Internet

November 9, 2022 • by W. David Marx

In the past, the difficulty of acquiring long-tail content suggested that a person had many underlying status assets, such as intelligence, curiosity, and deep knowledge. When anyone can find anything obscure on the Internet within minutes, acquisition alone reveals no virtues or skills....

Politics

The Big Lie

When the January 6 Select Committee chose this phrase to headline the second day of hearings they identified Donald J. Trump and his confederates as 21st century fascists

June 13, 2022 • by Claire Potter

The message from Republican politicians and their right-wing media flacks about the televised hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, which have now completed their second day? They don’t matter. “Nothing to see here!” they are all quacking, as they have ...

Media

Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

November 9, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble. In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...