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

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Intellectuals—Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them, Part II

Are intellectuals really the enemies of democracy?

November 24, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

You threaten democracy. They hate you. They suspect that you despise them, as “they cling to their guns and bibles.” They know that you think you are better than they are. When they resent you and act upon their resentment, they too threaten democracy. We recognize that the anti-intellectualism of the less ...

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A Public Seminar Thanksgiving

Looking back, looking forward

November 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Claire Potter

In past years we have had some great Thanksgiving posts from Mackenzie Wark, Jeremy Varon and Jeff Goldfarb. Claire Potter, at her old Tenured Radical perch, used to occasionally give out awards to the top ten "turkeys" of the year: for a blast from the blogging past, you can see them here and ...

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Intellectuals—Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them, Part I

Re-considering the democratic roles of the intellectual as revealed this week in Public Seminar

November 17, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Intellectuals have the knowledge and the experience required for people themselves to govern well. I am thinking of this today as I read the news and as I think about our work here at Public Seminar, drawing on my own long investigation of the sociology of intellectuals. My work on intellectuals ...

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Good News

On the American elections, Public Seminar and civility and subversion

November 10, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am feeling better this week. The election results were heartening, from top to bottom, from the high profile governor races in Virginia and New Jersey to the defeat of a most right wing county executive in Westchester, New York (close to home and very significant for me and my ...

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The Times They Are a Changin’?

The Halloween Attack in New York and the Prospects for Democracy

November 3, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I hope that the global march of authoritarianism, with Donald Trump in the vanguard, is a momentary reaction that will be overwhelmed by a broad democratic front, one that rejects xenophobia, terror, irrationality and fear. But, I also know that the authoritarian turn, a radical reinvention of political culture, is ...

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Jeffrey C. Isaac, John McCain and Me

Thinking about a Democratic Antifa

October 27, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Isaac documents the danger that is White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. General Kelley’s disciplined authoritarianism may be more “adult” than that of his boss. Yet, as Isaac observes, it is enabling and not controlling the threat Trump presents to American democracy. Analyzing the interactive context of Trump’s telephone conversation with ...

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My Mother, Public Seminar, and Donald Trump, with an Assist from Red Foxx

The Life of the Mind Online

October 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Humor, especially of the most biting sort, is one way that we manage to live through dark times, both public and private.

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Confronting Fundamental Problems of the Human Condition and Pressing Problems of the Day… by any means necessary

Four years of Public Seminar

October 6, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Now many fine colleagues have joined the project, as we had hoped would happen. Their creative imagination, experience, scholarship and commitment have made it what it is today and what it promises to be tomorrow. Claire Potter and I oversee the operations in adjoining offices, across from The New School ...

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Free Speech Matters vs. Black Lives Matter?

The Life of the Mind Online

September 29, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Yet, today, thanks to the President’s decidedly un-presidential performances, free speech once again is a broad concern of the American public, although the suffering of hurricane and fire victims has been unrelenting. As he exchanged insults with Kim Jong-un, increasing the chances of nuclear disaster, as the Republicans (thankfully) failed once ...

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The Earth Quake, Hurricanes, Political Madness and Dilemmas of Free Speech

The Life of the Mind Online

September 22, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am bewildered. How can so much bad news be happening at the same time? A major earthquake, one horrendous hurricane after another, the Republicans in Congress on the brink of finally making sure that millions -- old, poor and infirm -- can’t go to the doctor? Then there is President ...

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The Life of the Mind Online

The Politics of Small Things, Civility and Subversion and Public Seminar

September 14, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The future of scholarly and intellectual life will be decided on the web. The values of scholarship and the application of the fruits of scholarship to the problems of our times will thrive or wither online. It was out of a desire to test this judgment that I started dabbling ...

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The Inconspicuous, Understated, Wise, 9/11 Memorial of the Union Square Subway Station

An Everyday New York Masterpiece

September 11, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Four years ago, I published this piece on Deliberately Considered. We are reposting it today to mark the anniversary of the attacks of 2001. JG “There are more than 8 million ordinary objects in this city that carry within them a sense of its inimitable expression. They express its thundering diversity ...