The Woman Who Might Have Been President
As former Goldwater Girl Hillary Rodham Clinton is poised to become the first woman president of the United States, it is worth asking: what prevented Elizabeth Dole — Clinton’s former Senate colleague — from breaking that historic barrier?
Sexism, not just within the Republican Party but also in a larger political world saturated by media coverage, is one obvious answer. The misogynistic rhetoric emanating from the campaign of Donald J. Trump has a long history in both parties. …
Call For A Yell-Ceasefire Around The Polish Pogroms
A few weeks ago at 7/9 Planty Street in Kielce, Poland, we of the Jan Karski Society launched a permanent exhibition devoted to the Kielce pogrom, a tragedy suffered by a local community of Holocaust survivors for whom that city became a place, not of peace and security, but of death, pain, suffering, and deep wounds. The Polish neighbors of these victims, instead of providing help, had been their tormentors.
The location of the exhibit was an obvious choice: …
The Myths of the Clash between Clinton and Trump
On 26 September 2016, I watched the first presidential debate of my life. I am not an American citizen. I do not have the right to vote. I moved to New York only a few years ago. I have not had enough time to become accustomed to American political culture, and I do not get the excitement of a political campaign that begins years before the actual election. I do not even believe in elections as the culminating moment of a democratic life, so I am three times removed from the debate that unfolded in front of my eyes that evening. I still enjoy, …
Class and Culture at the Republican and Democratic Conventions
Class and Culture at the Republican and Democratic Conventions
Against Exceptionalism, Beyond Triumphalism
A Review of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
On 13 April 1943, on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial to the nation’s third president. Facing a sharp wind blowing in from the Potomac, the president admired the heroic statue and read the famous words that grace the interior walls of the building: “All Men Are Created Equal.” In the midst of a global war against fascism, Roosevelt proclaimed that the Jefferson Memorial would stand as “a shrine to freedom,” dedicated to a man who bent his entire life to the proposition that “men are capable of their own …
