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

Education

Media and Micro-Politics

Media, the New Authoritarianism and its alternatives from the perspective of the sociology of interaction

January 30, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I have been conducting a seminar on “media and micro-politics” in a variety of different forms since publishing The Politics of Small Things, often with my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Dayan. This year the newest member of the The New School ‘s sociology department, Julia Sonnevend, the author of a brilliant ...

Education

Women and Men in Dark Times (Syllabus Included)

University Lectures at The New School

January 29, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Elżbieta Matynia and I are teaching a special university wide course for undergraduates this semester, inspired by our favorite political thinker, Hannah Arendt, and her illuminating collection, Men in Dark Times. The course is a response to the present political moment. We, as did she, live in “dark times.” And as ...

Women and Men in Dark Times (Syllabus Included)

Feature

A Gray Post on a Sunny Friday Afternoon

Democracy and the Social Condition

January 26, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It’s sunny this morning here in New York. Nonetheless, from this day forward, and retroactively, I am going to label my weekly posts “Gray Friday.” I am doing so because all of my posts have been informed by my appreciation of the beauty of the gray, and because I see ...

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Is There No Feminism With Capitalism?

Reading Public Seminar, Thinking about the Relationships between Gender Justice and Free Public Life

January 19, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The developing debate over #MeToo and the MeToo backlash raises critical questions concerning the broad and deep struggles for democracy and social justice, perhaps the most central: are gender justice and capitalism compatible? Many of my friends and colleagues think not. I disagree. My dissent from the leftist consensus of my ...

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“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

Reflections on a provocative presidential question

January 12, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Some of my best friends come from “shithole countries.” “Oriental,” Latin American and African: they’re not white, wealthy or Christian. They don’t come from countries like Norway. According to the President of the United States, they are undesirables. When considering immigration, Trump reached, yet again, a new low. The racism and ...

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Charlottesville in the Mediated Public Sphere

How our mediated experiences bring us together and keep us apart

January 5, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As the New Year begins, we at Public Seminar are busily following up on our work from last year, as I explained in my last post. We are continuing our day to day work with no let up, but marshaling all our extra resources to publish ASAP #Charlottesville: Before and Beyond. I’ve been ...

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Happy New Year!

A Note from the “Publisher”

December 29, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

A.G. Sulzberger became the publisher of The New York Times this month, as I became the publisher of Public Seminar. I find this coincidence pretty funny, though perhaps you have to be me to get the joke. The Times is a great institution, though ultimately just a family business. “A.G.” is ...

Feature

Gray is Beautiful Revisited

On the Politics of Sex and the Crisis of Democracy at Home and Abroad

December 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This week I am returning to my appreciation of the color gray, a theme I promised to explore regularly here, which unfortunately I have only returned to occasionally, and not recently. I am returning to the theme on this the darkest of days -- I started writing this during the winter solstice ...

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Terrorism and Talk

Everyday Life and Public Seminar after the Explosion Under the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the Election of Doug Jones and “Tax Reform”

December 15, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I sat down to breakfast with Naomi, my wife: she reading the paper, we listening to the news bulletins. They were still vague. It was not known yet what the cause of the explosion was. At one point, the news announcer slipped and called the incident an attack, but then ...

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Title IX Investigations and Sexual Harassment at The New School

A letter from the editors of Public Seminar

December 14, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Claire Potter

A faculty member has resigned from The New School for Social Research prior to the conclusion of a Title IX investigation. We have received inquiries from faculty and students who wish to publish at Public Seminar responses and reflections about sexual harassment at our own university. This is new territory for us as ...

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Extremism in Defense of Liberty is No Vice?

Reflecting on Ends and Means: Thinking About Communism and Anti-Communism, Trumpism and Its Alternatives

December 8, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

These words were delivered just as I was coming of political age. I remember that they disturbed all the adults around me, who were fearful of Goldwater’s extremism. But I also remember wondering whether Goldwater had a point, even as I found no appeal in Goldwater’s partisan positions: against the ...

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Culture vs. Anti-Culture

What kind of cultural commitment provides constructive alternatives to “Tax Reform,” Access Hollywood Denial and Birther-gate Revival?

December 1, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As I sit down to write this post, “tax reform” is on the verge of becoming the law of the land in the U.S., giving to the rich, taking from the poor, disfavoring those who work to live (including some of the relatively wealthier among us). And as Jeremy Safran ...