Revolution Archives - Public Seminar

Philosophy

Revolutionary Ideals and the Temptations of Tyranny

A public conversation about philosophy, politics, and the fateful tropism of sincere political idealists of all types

January 29, 2026 • by Dan Edelstein, Gwenda-lin Grewal, James Miller and James Romm

The following conversation was first presented as a public panel on October 9, 2025, as part of the Henry H. Arnhold Forum on Global Challenges at the New School for Social Research. James Miller: As Dan Edelstein has shown in his important new book, The Revolution to Come, for most of ...

Revolutionary Ideals and the Temptations of Tyranny

Activism

Looking Back on the Zapatistas’ Revolutionary Fashion

Liberation movements like the Zapatistas and the Black Panther Party teach us to unite political, artistic, and cultural ideas in how we dress

October 1, 2025 • by Mike Harrington

The so-called “first postmodern revolution,” the Zapatista uprising of 1994, came at a time when the internet was becoming a worldwide phenomenon. And with this Pandora’s box of widely accessible imagery and information newly opened, people were able to witness the uprising in more-or-less real time. Based in Chiapas, the southernmost ...

Looking Back on the Zapatistas’ Revolutionary Fashion

Film & Performing Arts

The Art of Change: A Libretto

Opera 0.2: A Prelude

September 18, 2025 • by Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Chiara Bottici and Matteo Procuranti

Synopsis: A community decides to pursue its revolutionary dream by adopting the principle of accelerated change, and applies it to every aspect of social life. The result is a utopian (or dystopian) world that may (or may not) turn out to be ours. Event 1. Prologue Flutist in dialogue with video projections ...

Democracy

Hannah Arendt: Insurrection and Constitutionalism

The democratic project is both unfinished and unstable

January 31, 2023 • by James Miller

Even though the post-war consensus over the meaning and value of specifically liberal democratic institutions seems more fragile than ever—polls show that trust in government experts and elected representatives has rarely been lower—democracy as furious dissent flourishes as rarely before, in vivid and vehement outbursts of anger at remote elites ...

Hannah Arendt: Insurrection and Constitutionalism

Capitalism

Capitalism Uber Alles

After the collapse of Marx’s hopes for humanity, what’s left of the Left?

June 21, 2022 • by Mitchell Abidor

Though dominant for centuries, capitalism formerly coexisted with other economic forms, once alongside forms of feudalism, later among forms of socialism. This is no longer the case; with the demise of the Marxist regimes, the sway of capitalism is now universal....

The Arts

The World’s First Revolutionary Artist

Was Jacques-Louis David an opportunist? Or a passionate propagandist?

April 18, 2022 • by Mitchell Abidor

Jacques-Louis David Radical Draftsman is a fitting exploration of the first great radical artist, a master of propaganda whose greatest triumphs were a result of his unflagging willingness to place his enormous talents at the service of his deepest political beliefs. ...

History

Remembering—and Forgetting—the Cuban Revolution

The history of Cubans’ mobilizations of, reckonings with, and debates over their past has not yet been fully told

August 24, 2021 • by Michael J. Bustamante

_____ There are two widely familiar versions of the Cuban story. According to the first, on January 1, 1959, a ragtag band of rebels swept down from the Sierra Maestra, delivering Cuba from the clutches of short-term dictatorship and longer neocolonial submission to the United States. In this view, the “triumph” of ...

Remembering—and Forgetting—the Cuban Revolution

Democracy

Why Egypt Didn’t Get the Revolution it Needed

An interview with Peter Hessler

April 27, 2020 • by Peter Hessler and Michael Schmale

For American expatriates living in China in the first decade of the 2000s, Peter Hessler was already something of a household name, not just as the New Yorker’s China correspondent, but as a public intellectual. His books became fixtures of laowai bookshelves almost as soon as they were published. His ...

Why Egypt Didn’t Get the Revolution it Needed

A Revolution’s Course Through a Revolutionary’s Trajectory

The path and fate of Abdul Baset al-Sarout

July 18, 2019 • by Yassin Al-Haj Saleh

The young footballer who at the beginning of the Syrian revolution was 19 years old -- a goalkeeper for the Homs-based Karama soccer team and the Syrian youth soccer team -- joined the revolution from its very beginning. He was recorded in a video saying that he began singing and ...

Feature

Cuba Mourns Fidel, Maybe

Reactions on the ground in the aftermath of the leader’s death

December 27, 2016 • by Hira Nabi

For nine days there was no alcohol sold on the island. Cuba is not a dry country, but it became one in mourning Fidel. “There was absolutely no alcohol being sold, not even to tourists,” Jenni, a visiting student from a US college on a study abroad program told me. ...

Feature

Book Presentation: Fire and Blood

April 29, 2016 • by Zeyno Ustun

Enzo Traverso presents his latest book, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914-1945. with comments by professors Cinzia Arruzza, Federico Finchelstein, Andreas Kalyvas, and Eli Zaretsky. Fire and Blood (Verso Books) looks at the European crisis of the two world wars as a single historical sequence: the age of the European Civil War (1914–1945). Its ...

Feature

The IMF Makes Class Warriors of Us All

April 22, 2016 • by Tithi Bhattacharya

On October 24, 1973, the Egyptian military, under the command of General Hosni Mubarak, and under instructions from President Anwar Sadat, dealt an unprecedented blow to the most powerful regime in the Middle East: Israel. As the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal and established bridgeheads in the Sinai peninsula, ...