Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research

Democracy

The Seamy Side of the Politics of Small Things

Turkey Poland, China, the United States and beyond

December 22, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I recognized that the reviewer had a point and decided to answer the question by adding a chapter: “2004: The Church, the Right and the Politics of Small Things.” In it, I showed how micro-politics, politics in the details of social interaction, in churches with links to the Republican Party, ...

The Seamy Side of the Politics of Small Things

Migration

Trumpism and the Banality of Evil

More reflections on challenges of historical comparisons

December 4, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am astonished that it has come to this. I have long understood that the American political system is flawed. White supremacy is knitted into its fabric. The electoral college is a monster that has undermined majority rule and is now being used by Trump and his supporters in their quest ...

Democracy

The Unfinished Project of Defeating Donald Trump

Reflections on the elections in the United States

November 6, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I have voiced my judgment over the past four years, and I have facilitated and organized others’ opinions, reports and analyses of Trumpism and global authoritarian trends here at the Democracy Seminar. Yet, a week ago, I exercised the real power of my vote. It was gratifying. And I didn’t only vote ...

The Unfinished Project of Defeating Donald Trump

North America

After Trump

Towards democracy and social justice

October 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

That, of course, is the problem. And the problem is grave. In 2016, we were worried about what Trump’s victory might mean. Now we know that things have become much worse than most of us ever imagined, and not only for us in the United States. Trump has been a revolutionary—he ...

Migration

The Last Time I Saw Them- New Democracy Seminar Forum

On the uses and disadvantages of historical comparisons for life

October 19, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Marci Shore and Stephen Naron

Can understanding distant parts of the world inspire deeper ways of thinking about our own? Can understanding moments in the past help us to think more creatively about the present? The Nietzschean “on the uses and disadvantages” is intended to suggest that thinking across time and space is not a ...

Migration

‘The Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’

Tyrone Chambers, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Vera Grant, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Dan Shore, Marci Shore

October 19, 2020 • by Marci Shore, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Vera I. Grant, Dan H. Shore, Tyrone Chambers, II and Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Edited and abridged by Marci Shore KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI: I’m here in Krasnogruda. It means at the border between Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, in the northeastern corner of Poland. In my Borderland Centre, which, with my friends, I established 30 years ago, thinking of being more engaged in art, for solidarity with ...

‘The Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’

Event

Me, the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy

An online book talk sponsored by the Democracy Seminar on Friday, October 16, 11:00-1:00 EST

October 12, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia

Populism erodes democracy in Europe, North America, and South America. It is a complex phenomenon that has mobilized many philosophers and political thinkers for some time now. For the most part, and not without reason, thinkers see populism as more than a threat to democracy: they see it as the ...

Democracy

Pandemic Politics

Reflections on the first appearance of the Biden – Harris team

August 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“Kamala is killing it!” “The two speeches, of Biden and Harris, affectively expressed compassion and warmth, as they made sharp political points.” These were my Facebook responses to the coming out of the Biden – Harris team. Although I generally don’t use Facebook to express such judgments, I couldn’t constrain myself, struck as ...

Democracy

We’re All in the Same Boat: A Democracy Seminar Update

August 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As I wrote over two years ago, when our current group first began to take shape, this is the second iteration of the Democracy Seminar. The first was an exchange between critical democrats in the United States and Central Europe in the late nineteen eighties and early nineties. The contrast ...

Democracy

The Politics of Small Things Before, During and After the Pandemic

From the Kitchen Table to the Kitchen Cabinet

July 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Between 1973 and 1989, I intensively studied public life behind “The Iron Curtain.” I researched and wrote my dissertation on student theater in Poland. In the late 70s and the 80s, I observed the emergence of an autonomous cultural and political life, and the development of a democratic opposition there ...

Democracy

Elections 2020

An interview with Jacek Kucharczyk about the upcoming Polish vote

June 26, 2020 • by Jacek Kucharczyk, Elzbieta Matynia and Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Professors Elzbieta Matynia and Jeffrey Goldfarb asked Dr. Jacek Kucharczyk, President of the Executive Board of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw, to talk about the current situation, before the first round of voting. Jeffrey Goldfarb (JG): Jacek, it's great for the three of us to be getting together. I’ll ...

Activism

What Is to Be Done?

Three scholars of democracy respond to the protests

June 4, 2020 • by Eli Zaretsky, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia

I believe this extraordinary nationwide mobilization is the best answer possible to the Democrats who engineered the destruction of the Sanders primary campaign -- I mean Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, James Clyburn, Pete Buttigieg, and the innumerable reporters and media “experts” who from the beginning insisted ...