Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Award-winning historians Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston spoke (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss their new book Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Edited by Nichols and Preston with fellow historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the collection of curated essays discusses what American grand strategy ...
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Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

What Use Is Fact-Checking Against Fact-Free Politics?

The rise of false histories by real politicians

In early November, a report to the United Nations written by Christian Schmidt, the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, was leaked to the press. In it, Schmidt warned that the country was in danger of falling apart, with a “very real” prospect for a renewed civil war waged by ...
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What Use Is Fact-Checking Against Fact-Free Politics?

Cents and Non-Cents about Inflation

No, it isn’t Biden’s fault.

Yes, inflation is back—only 6 percent as of October, which is nothing like the 13.5 percent that brought down Jimmy Carter in the election of 1980. The exact numbers don’t really matter. Rising prices, especially gasoline prices, are always bad news for the party in power. We must remember, and keep ...
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Cents and Non-Cents about Inflation

To Fight Covid Variants, Let’s Rethink the Sherman Anti-Trust Act!

We have another new threat, but two pills that might fight it. We know “cocktails” work but our laws prevent drug companies from cooperating to make them.

We are now threatened by Omicron, a new Covid variant with a name like a villain from a Transformers movie. Although on paper its genes look scary, we still know very little about its real-life behavior. So, while travel precautions make sense until we know more (and perhaps we could finally get serious about ...
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To Fight Covid Variants, Let’s Rethink the Sherman Anti-Trust Act!

Corporate Handouts Are Leverage

States and cities can make free money less free, if they try.

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, as part of an ongoing fight he has with the Republican-controlled state legislature over the minimum wage, released an executive order requiring corporations that receive tax incentives or grants from the state to pay the same minimum wage that state contractors must pay ($13.50 an hour, increasing to ...
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Corporate Handouts Are Leverage

The Politics of Infrastructure

How the Lebanese struggle for public infrastructure is a lesson for all

Last month, Lebanon’s national electricity grid went dark—and this tiny Mediterranean country, known for its elite educational institutions, tourism and banking, but struggling to emerge from decades of conflict and corruption, found itself in newspaper headlines around the world again.  The state’s two power plants had run out of fuel. Having ...
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The Politics of Infrastructure

Getting an Abortion in Buffalo

I terminated a pregnancy in my twenties. Decades later, I’m still learning the full truth of reproductive justice.

My boyfriend told me he wanted to keep it—he wanted another chance at fatherhood. He was 45 and I was 20. He’d left a daughter a few years younger than me behind in Dublin. He drank. And I was in fucking college.  At Women’s Health Services on Main Street in Buffalo, ...
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Getting an Abortion in Buffalo

Can We Talk about Race?

An award-winning journalist says yes—it isn’t easy, but everyone can learn to do it

Celeste Headlee, an award-winning journalist, professional speaker and author of We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter (Harper Wave, 2018), and Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving (Harmony, 2021) met (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss writing about the difficult conversations that need to happen ...
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Can We Talk about Race?

Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble.  In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...
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Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

How COVID-19 Became a Crisis

To understand what went wrong, look at how the problem is framed

We are in crisis. Nothing could be more self-evident: a global pandemic has ravaged the human species.   But wait—what does it mean to call an open-ended event that is playing out over a period of years a “crisis"? If humans live with viruses, how is Covid-19, and the diseases it triggers, a crisis for the human species and our ...
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How COVID-19 Became a Crisis

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

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

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 ...
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How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Moonwalking in Brasilia

How Jair Bolsonaro creates the illusion of moving forward while sliding back

In Brazil's ongoing experiment with a far-right populist President, there is a gap between Jair Bolsonaro's performance in face-to-face rallies and on social networks and his minimal  accomplishments as a politician constrained by a complex constitutional network of institutions and norms.  Bolsonaro’s oral and written communication is filled with the hallmarks ...
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Moonwalking in Brasilia