History Archives - Page 12 of 78

Capitalism

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Sociologist Rachel Sherman talks to Guillermina Altomonte about “class traitors” challenging how we think about wealth

October 27, 2021 • by Guillermina Altomonte and Rachel Sherman

By all measures we live in an era defined by profound inequality. Most recently, while millions of Americans lost their jobs and became poorer during the pandemic, U.S. billionaires became $1.8 trillion richer. Rachel Sherman, Professor of Sociology at The New School, has long been interested in how the wealthy ...

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Politics

Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

An introduction to this week’s issue on the future of constitutionalism and democracy

October 13, 2021 • by James Miller

The idea for a symposium in Public Seminar on “Constitutional Politics” grows out of a two-day conference on Liberalism & Democracy: Past, Present, Prospects. I organized these conversations at the New School in February 2019, in collaboration with Helena Rosenblatt, a historian at City University of New York Graduate Center. One of the key participants was Aziz Rana of Cornell University, ...

Constitutional Politics

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Why the perception of the Constitution will inevitably be a central part of an extended process of political self-reckoning

October 13, 2021 • by Anthony Barnett

It’s a fact that the United States is no longer the world’s pre-eminent superpower—a change that cannot help but transform America’s political conception of itself. Its decline in relative power will of course take time. The dollar still rules, the military reach of the States is unequalled. But the US has ...

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Constitutional Politics

Chile Tries to Write a New Constitution

Progressives in the nation’s Constitutional Convention see an opportunity for creating a more just society

October 13, 2021 • by Jennifer M. Piscopo

In a national referendum held on October 25, 2020, nearly 80 percent of Chileans agreed that the country should have a new constitution, to be written at a convention attended by specially elected delegates. The vote was the climactic result of weeks of paralyzing demonstrations in 2019, as students, feminists, workers, Indigenous peoples, pensioners, and thousands of others had taken to the streets to protest economic and social injustice. With resounding majorities choosing change, Chileans ...

Constitutional Politics

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Many American states have not only frequently amended their constitutions, but, at least as importantly, have replaced existing constitutions with presumably better, updated, ones

October 12, 2021 • by Sanford Levinson

“Veneration” is a term that James Madison used in Federalist 49, to express the kind of great respect he hoped the new Constitution he had helped write would command in the debate over ratification then raging in America. Yet as Aziz Rana reminds us, many of America’s most notable political ...

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Uncategorized

Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties

Will admitting a “tragic mistake” change the way we wage war?

September 21, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

Last Friday, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie of U.S. Central Command admitted that the August 29 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that the U.S. had claimed hit ISIS-K fighters had instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children. This “tragic mistake,” as he called it, at the very end of the ...

Capitalism

The “K” in the Economy

Private equity and the rise of permanent capital

September 20, 2021 • by Andrew Moon and Janet Roitman

The consensus is that the road to economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is K-shaped: certain sectors and populations will thrive while others stagnate or decline. Outsized online retailers and digital infrastructure providers, like Amazon, have experienced boom times, while many Main Street small businesses have gone bust. Those with a stake ...

Colonization

A Pencil For Your Land

Ngũgĩ and Achebe on colonial public school

September 20, 2021 • by Casper Andersen

_____ Oppressed people who retaliate are up against the privileged and powerful. Fighting back often places them outside the system. But what happens when the suppressors’ tools are turned on themselves? Can a colonial education—the underhand offer of ‘a pencil for land’—be turned into an emancipatory counter movement? ‘Colonial mimicry’ describes a ...

Europe & Central Asia

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

September 7, 2021 • by Maria Bucur and Kristen R. Ghodsee

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania. “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

Feminism

Handing Power Back to the Vigilantes

Texas’s new abortion ban erodes the power of the federal government to protect civil rights, and there is no reason that this mechanism couldn’t be used to undermine much more.

September 7, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ The new anti-abortion law in Texas is not just about abortion; it is about undermining civil rights decisions made by the Supreme Court during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The Supreme Court declined to stop a state law that violates a constitutional right. Since World War II, the Supreme Court has ...

History

Politicians Should Get the History Right—Particularly Their Own History

If Democrats want to be trustworthy they must account for, not hide, how they have changed over time

July 14, 2021 • by Janet Golden and Richard Harris

_____ The Democratic Party’s successful struggle to reject its ugly history of racism and sexism is a source of pride, and justifiably so. So you can imagine how gobsmacked we were upon reading the official history of the national Democratic Party on its own website. Such distortion and historical misrepresentations! According to ...

Politicians Should Get the History Right—Particularly Their Own History

Feature

My Arrest in Poland

The authorities hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance

July 7, 2021 • 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 ...

History

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Sociologist Rachel Sherman talks to Guillermina Altomonte about “class traitors” challenging how we think about wealth

Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

An introduction to this week’s issue on the future of constitutionalism and democracy

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Why the perception of the Constitution will inevitably be a central part of an extended process of political self-reckoning

Chile Tries to Write a New Constitution

Progressives in the nation’s Constitutional Convention see an opportunity for creating a more just society

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Many American states have not only frequently amended their constitutions, but, at least as importantly, have replaced existing constitutions with presumably better, updated, ones

Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties

Will admitting a “tragic mistake” change the way we wage war?

The “K” in the Economy

Private equity and the rise of permanent capital

A Pencil For Your Land

Ngũgĩ and Achebe on colonial public school

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

Handing Power Back to the Vigilantes

Texas’s new abortion ban erodes the power of the federal government to protect civil rights, and there is no reason that this mechanism couldn’t be used to undermine much more.

Politicians Should Get the History Right—Particularly Their Own History

If Democrats want to be trustworthy they must account for, not hide, how they have changed over time

My Arrest in Poland

The authorities hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance

Newsletter

Connect With Us