Essays

The decisive defeat of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was the big news of the 2015 Canadian election. Harper resigned as party leader, and the dirty laundry of his heavily controlled campaign is now being aired publicly. The Harper reelection campaign drew deeply on racist and Islamaphobic politics, attacking a Federal Court of Appeal decision …

On Friday night a heavy metal concert at a downtown Bucharest night club burst literally into flames, as a spark from a pyrotechnic display set off a conflagration that caused panic and pandemonium among the roughly 400 young people trapped inside. Over thirty people were burned to …

Mahmoud Abbas made headlines last month when he announced in the U.N’s General Assembly that the Palestinians would no longer “continue to be bound” by the Oslo Agreements. He had warned that he was going to drop a “bombshell,” but given that Oslo has been dead for several years already, the significance of …

Not content to run John Boehner out of office, the most extreme members of the Republican caucus tried to scuttle plans to elect Randian conservative Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House because they found Ryan too “left wing” for their tastes. “Do you know how crazy this election is?” …

In late August 2015 an article appeared in the New York Times with a loaded headline: Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says. The article reported on a recent publication in the journal Science, which raised …

It was a colleague, Jonathan Bach, who discovered that Trebor Scholz and I, both currently associate professors at the New School, happened to be serving in the German military 25 years ago — but on opposite sides of the wall! As such, he brought us together for the Enter Ghost Symposium, giving us an opportunity to reflect on our experiences in …

It’s getting cold in Germany. It’s actually hard to believe that it has only been weeks since warm images of the “good” German went around the world, of thousands of people welcoming even more thousands of refugees with food, toys, and clothes at train stations throughout the country. It was only a few months ago that Angela Merkel transformed from the dictator of …

On October 7, the Romanian Senate passed a law whereby anyone accused of “social defamation” can be subject to penalty. The financial sanction for individual charges varies between 1.000 RON and 30.000 RON (225 Euros-6.750 Euros), whereas fines for group defamation can go up to 22.500 Euros. The person who initiated such a mind-blowing act, Liviu Dragnea, is arguably one of the most questionable …

For a brief moment in late September, New York City had a new celebrity: Pizza Rat. This furry character — either endearingly repulsive, or repulsively endearing, depending on your sensibility — appeared in most of our social media feeds after a quick-fingered commuter snapped the rodent dragging a large pizza slice down the stairs of a typical, filthy subway station. …

Many researchers analyze the Maidan movement as a part of recent waves of protests shaking the world time and again. However, despite the similarities behind all these movements such as populist identities, anti-state agendas, and more, there is one crucial difference between the movements in the post-socialist world and protest movements in other countries – this difference concerns the social climate. …