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

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For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Ideology looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival

April 24, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Ideology doesn’t only undermine democracy, as I tried to demonstrate in my last post. It looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival. I thought about this reading Jake Davis’s “Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal. Davis’s essay attracted a great deal of attention, with ...

For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Democracy

On Socialism / Against Ideology

Goodbye Gray Friday, joining Democracy Seminar 2.0

March 15, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It’s frustrating. I see this clearly. I want you to see it. But you just can’t, or is it you won’t? I know my judgment goes against the grain of the prevailing social science and popular opinion. It requires a specific understanding of ideology that comes out of bitter experience, ...

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Two Cheers for Ageism

Ten notes on the political, cultural and personal blessings and burdens of mortality, inspired by the greatest lecture I have ever heard

March 1, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The lecture is Hans Jonas, “The Blessings and Burdens of Mortality”. 1. I don’t want Bernie Sanders to be President of the United States, and I also don’t want Joe Biden. I abhor Donald Trump, and I am not excited about a possible President Elizabeth Warren either. They’re all too old. 2. I ...

Democracy

Towards a World Wide Committee of Democratic Correspondence

Democracy Seminar 2.0

February 15, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Such a grand imagination informs the making of Democracy Seminar 2.0, the revival of an initially clandestine New School seminar of the 1980s and early 1990s that provided a place for Eastern European dissidents to reimagine their world. As was the case in the earlier seminar, we are now following ...

Democracy

On Media Mess and Its Alternatives

Islands of Totalitarianism and Democracy continued

February 1, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

When people meet in their differences, as equals, develop a capacity to meet and talk in the presence of each other, and develop a capacity to act together in concert, they constitute political power, an island of democracy. For Hannah Arendt, in fact, this is political power in contrast to ...

Democracy

From “Islands of Democracy” to “Islands of Totalitarianism”

Notes on my conversation with Daniel Dayan about the disturbing events in France and the United States, and beyond

January 18, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We met in our favorite Parisian workplace, La Caféothèque, and then caught up with each other elsewhere over a lunch and a dinner. We’re working on our ongoing collaborative writing project, now influenced by recent events in France and the United States. We disussed papers he is developing on a theory ...

From “Islands of Democracy” to “Islands of Totalitarianism”

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A Public Seminar Happy New Year?

Reflections between hope and despair, with musical accompaniment

January 4, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I wanted to declare, without hesitation: Happy New Year! But I couldn’t, as New Year’s celebrations passed. I fear a very unhappy one, with more of what we have been experiencing. Democracy, free speech, academic freedom, human rights, and the movements for class, gender, sexual, and racial justice are all ...

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My Arrest in Poland

Reflections on the significance of an apparently trivial event

December 21, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what ...

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The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

Reflections on Imagination and Forgetting

December 7, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“We should remember with caution, even as we must proceed boldly.” This is the way I have already tried to succinctly summarize my approach to “gray memory” earlier this year. I know that memory holds great promise, as Milan Kundera once put it: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of ...

The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

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Chief Justice Roberts to the Rescue?

Or, how the relationships between conservative idealism and realism may serve the public good

November 23, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I wrote this last week, but almost as soon as I did, I had second thoughts. I read an early draft of Peter Dreier comprehensive, “What Should American Progressives Learn From the Mid-terms?” in which he thoroughly demonstrated the depth and breadth of the Democrats’ victory in the elections. Perhaps given the dimensions of ...

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Civilization or Barbarism?

The American election results viewed from the radical center

November 9, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I voted! My vote was more a ritual offering to my political commitments, than a set of democratic decisions. It was as if I live in a one party state. I affirmed my support for the party. With my community, my friends and neighbors, my students and colleagues, and my family and loved ...